Structural Change in Life Cycle Fertility During the Fertility Transition: France Before and After the Revolution of 1789

This paper explores the hypothesis that the fertility transition in France entailed a structural change in behaviour from natural to controlled fertility. We define the hypothesis in terms of an empirically estimable model of lifetime fertility. The model produces separate estimates of the three main proximate determinants: the hazard rate of conception for ovulating women, the timing of ovulation resumption after a birth, and permanent sterility. Fertility control is defined as responsiveness of the conception hazard to number of surviving children. We demonstrate key features of the model by simulated family histories. The historical application provides support for the transition hypothesis in the south of France, and mixed results for the north. We also find strong evidence of persistent couple-specific heterogeneity even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in fecundability. We suggest how future research might improve the model.     

Identifying health inequalities between Māori and non‐Māori using mortality tables

Abstract

While there is a need for more detailed information on health inequality to guide public health policy, the most complete and easily available data remain those in mortality tables. We investigate, via a comparative analysis of data from New Zealand on Māori and non‐Māori mortality, whether more detailed information than raw life expectancy may be extracted from the mortality tables. Given a parametric distribution for the mortality capable of fitting irregularities in mortality table data, the curvature of the survival and hazard rates can identify changes in mortality rates, such as infant and late‐life adult mortality, which allows for straightforward comparisons between the two sub‐populations. Our results identify an exogenous effect in earlier mortality among Maori, which correlates well with many published observations of health and health‐care inequalities between Māori and non‐Māori. This “proof of concept” for our method of analysis indicates that examination of bulk data such as those in mortality tables has a potential role in the design of more detailed studies involving causes of mortality.     

动态交通分配中一类转换率系统的稳定性

在假设交通很拥挤同时交通的转换率与路径费用成正比的前提下,构建了一个动态的转换率模型.为了获取转换率系统的全局渐近稳定,提出了一个普遍适用的Lyapunov函数方法,与此同时通过线性矩阵不等式方法,得到了保证转换率系统全局渐近稳定的充分条件.     

Positive dependence of random variables with a common marginal distribution

In this paper we review some notions of positive dependence of random variables with a common univariate marginal distribution and describe the related moment and probability inequalities. We first present a comparison between i.i.d. random variables and exchangeable random variables via an application of de Finetti's theorem, then describe some useful probability inequalities via partial orderings of the strength of their positive dependence. Finally, we state a result for random variables which are not necessarily exchangeable. Special applications to the multivariate normal distribution will be discussed, and the results involve only the correlation matrix of the distribution.     

关于脉冲消费控制策略的最优随机问题研究

讨论了一类随机控制问题,其脉冲消费控制策略受控于一混合过程——几何布朗运动和泊松过程.在基于获得效用函数期望值的最大值这一目标下,利用变分不等式和随机积分理论,获得了最优消费控制策略及最优值函数所满足的定理,并进一步针对具体的参数,给出了其数值计算结果.     

Overlapping group lasso for high-dimensional generalized linear models

Abstract

Structured sparsity has recently been a very popular technique to deal with the high-dimensional data. In this paper, we mainly focus on the theoretical problems for the overlapping group structure of generalized linear models (GLMs). Although the overlapping group lasso method for GLMs has been widely applied in some applications, the theoretical properties about it are still unknown. Under some general conditions, we presents the oracle inequalities for the estimation and prediction error of overlapping group Lasso method in the generalized linear model setting. Then, we apply these results to the so-called Logistic and Poisson regression models. It is shown that the results of the Lasso and group Lasso procedures for GLMs can be recovered by specifying the group structures in our proposed method. The effect of overlap and the performance of variable selection of our proposed method are both studied by numerical simulations. Finally, we apply our proposed method to two gene expression data sets: the p53 data and the lung cancer data.     

On the maximal inequalities for the average of pairwise i.i.d. random variables

We obtain two sided inequalities for the tail of the maximal function of the averages of a multiple sequence of pairwise i.i.d. random variables taking values in a separable Banach space. We then use the results to establish a necessary and sufficient con¬dition, in terms of the common distribution of the norm of the random variables, for the maximal function to be in L , 1< p << &z.rdang;     

Ethnic inequalities at the transition from school to work in Belgium and Spain: Discrimination or self-exclusion?

In the labor market, net disadvantages of immigrants, so-called “ethnic penalties”, may stem from rather different sources, among them discrimination by employers or self-exclusion processes. This paper attempts to indirectly disentangle these two mechanisms by studying ethnic penalties from a time-related perspective. Using the EULFS 2000 ad hoc module on school-to-work transitions, a comparative event-history analysis of entry into stable higher status employment is conducted for two European countries, Belgium and Spain. These countries differ considerably in their immigration contexts and patterns of school-to-work transitions, requiring different hypotheses about the relevance of the self-exclusion mechanism. The results show that in Belgium ethnic penalties for non-EU immigrants exist and remain constant irrespective of the length of the job search. In Spain the gap between non-EU immigrants and the native-born is even more pronounced and, importantly, increases significantly over time. This leads to the conclusion that discrimination seems to be relevant in both contexts and that self-exclusion resulting from early abandonment of job search activities is a further important factor in Spain.     

Immigrants’ educational disadvantage: an examination across ten countries and three surveys

Studies on immigrants’ disadvantage focus predominantly on labour market perspectives. Immigrants’ poor education is a subject much less examined especially in a cross-national context. This paper examines differences in educational achievement between immigrants and natives across ten OECD countries. In English-speaking countries, immigrants fare best, while in Continental European countries they fare worse compared to natives. Whilst language skills seem to explain immigrants’ disadvantage in English-speaking countries, socioeconomic background and school segregation are further important determinants of immigrants’ gap in Continental Europe. Results presented are predominantly robust across three sources of achievement data: PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS.