Social Background and Placement Course – The Case of Denmark

The scope of this article, founded on a nationwide survey in Denmark, is first to describe the social characteristics of families with a child placed outside home, and, further, to examine whether differences in regard to the parents' social background are correlated with different placement courses. A range of hypotheses on the correlation between social background and the course of placement are examined. It appears, for example, that children from low-resource families come into contact with the social system earlier, and are placed outside the home at an earlier age than children from high-resource families. Low-resource children are more often placed in foster care, and are more often subject to contact restrictions. The article discusses whether these differences reflect a socio-cultural discrimination. Secondly, a discussion is raised whether the supportive measures available are adequate in relation to the serious problems of the families concerned.     

A Multiplicative Alo-group Based Hierarchical Decision Model and Application

Pairwise comparison matrix (PCM) is a popular technique used in multi-criteria decision making. The abelian linearly ordered group (alo-group) is a powerful tool for the discussion of PCMs. In this article, a criterion for acceptable consistency of PCM is introduced, which is independent of the scale and can be intuitively interpreted. The relation of the introduced criterion with the weak consistency is investigated. Then, a multiplicative alo-group based hierarchical decision model is proposed. The following approaches are included: (1) the introduced criterion for acceptable consistency is used to check whether or not a PCM is acceptable; (2) the row’s geometric mean method is used for deriving the local priorities of a multiplicative PCM; (3) a Hierarchy Composition Rule derived from the weighted mean is used for computing the criterion/subcriterion’s weights with regard to the total goal; and (4) the weighted geometric mean is used as the aggregation rule, where the alternative’s local priorities are min-normalized. The proposed model has the property of preserving rank. Moreover, it has counterparts in the additive case. Finally, the model is applied to a layout planning problem of an aircraft maintenance base with a computer-based software.     

Nonparametric Welfare Analysis for Discrete Choice

We consider empirical measurement of equivalent variation (EV) and compensating variation (CV) resulting from price change of a discrete good using individual‐level data when there is unobserved heterogeneity in preferences. We show that for binary and unordered multinomial choice, the marginal distributions of EV and CV can be expressed as simple closed‐form functionals of conditional choice probabilities under essentially unrestricted preference distributions. These results hold even when the distribution and dimension of unobserved heterogeneity are neither known nor identified, and utilities are neither quasilinear nor parametrically specified. The welfare distributions take simple forms that are easy to compute in applications. In particular, average EV for a price rise equals the change in average Marshallian consumer surplus and is smaller than average CV for a normal good. These nonparametric point‐identification results fail for ordered choice if the unit price is identical for all alternatives, thereby providing a connection to Hausman–Newey's (2014) partial identification results for the limiting case of continuous choice.     

富足p序半群与右弱完全右p序半群的结构

研究了富足p序半群的结构,给出了这类序半群结构定理.定义了右弱完全右p序半群.研究了这种序半群的重要性质,并给出这种序半群的结构分解定理.     

A nonparametric procedure for testing partially ranked data

In consumer preference studies, it is common to seek a complete ranking of a variety of, say N, alternatives or treatments. Unfortunately, as N increases, it becomes progressively more confusing and undesirable for respondents to rank all N alternatives simultaneously. Moreover, the investigators may only be interested in consumers’ top few choices. Therefore, it is desirable to accommodate the setting where each survey respondent ranks only her/his most preferred k (k?N) alternatives. In this paper, we propose a simple procedure to test the independence of N alternatives and the top-k ranks, such that the value of k can be predetermined before securing a set of partially ranked data or be at the discretion of the investigator in the presence of complete ranking data. The asymptotic distribution of the proposed test under root-n local alternatives is established. We demonstrate our procedure with two real data sets.     

Intermediate efficiency by shifting alternatives and evaluation of power

We study a modification of the notion of asymptotic intermediate efficiency of statistical tests by defining it in terms of shifting alternatives. We prove a theorem providing conditions for its existence and show that this modification is closely related to the original Kallenberg's asymptotic intermediate efficiency in a quite general setting. Next, we find estimates for differences between powers of the Neyman–Pearson test under original alternatives and that of a given test under shifted alternatives. We also present some simulation results. They attest to consistency of theoretical results with observed empirical powers for quite small sample sizes.     

Partitioning Pearson's Chi-squared Statistic for Singly Ordered Two-way Contingency Tables

This paper presents a partition of Pearson's chi-squared statistic for singly ordered two-way contingency tables. The partition involves using orthogonal polynomials for the ordinal variable while generalized basic vectors are used for the non-ordinal variable. The benefit of this partition is that important information about the structure of the ordered variable can be identified in terms of locations, dispersion and higher order components. For the non-ordinal variable, it is shown that the squared singular values from the singular value decomposition of the transformed dataset can be partitioned into location, dispersion and higher order components. The paper also uses the chi-squared partition to present an alternative to the maximum likelihood technique of parameter estimation for the log-linear analysis of the contingency table.     

Unmasking the Trend Sought by Jonckheere-Type Tests for Right-Censored Data

Medical and epidemiological studies often involve groups of subjects associated with increasing levels of exposure to a risk factor. Survival of the groups is expected to follow the same order as the level of exposure. Formal tests for this trend fall into the regression framework if one knows what function of exposure to use as a covariate. When unknown, a linear function of exposure level is often used. Jonckheere-type tests for trend have generated continued interest largely because they do not require specification of a covariate. This paper shows that the Jonckheere-type test statistics are special cases of a generalized linear rank statistic with time-dependent covariates which unfortunately depend on the initial group sizes and censoring distributions. Using asymptotic relative efficiency calculations, the Jonckheere tests are compared to standard linear rank tests based on a linear covariate over a spectrum of shapes for the true trend.     

基于中国家庭金融调查数据的 创业与居民幸福感实证研究

进入“新常态”阶段,中国经济发展增长速度放缓,结构性问题逐步凸显。“大众创业、万众创新”号召的提出,为进一步缓解结构性矛盾提供了因应之道。采用中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据,验证了创业与居民幸福感的相关性,并进一步进行了实证检验。研究发现,创业与居民的幸福感正相关;居民幸福感可随着创业参与水平的提高而不断增加;持平或盈利的创业项目可以提升居民幸福感,盈利水平与居民幸福感提升水平正相关。因此,应抓住“双创”的机遇,合理利用各项优惠政策和措施,同时提升人力资本,强化创业培训,提高创业成功的概率,进而提升居民幸福感。