城市空间的改造、生产到正义侵蚀（巴黎1850—1890）

1850—1890年以奥斯曼为代表的统治者对巴黎城市空间进行功能性改造，塑造了巴黎新的景观社会并完成了空间生产化、秩序化、政治化的重构。资产阶级借助地租杠杆，利用空间政治工具性和政治功能性进行资本扩张的同时，也实现了阶层分化和新身份政治的形成。资本投机下的空间改造与生产使得巴黎无产阶级生存与发展的权益逐步被蚕食、侵害和剥夺，无产者对资产阶级的空间改造逐渐产生了由认同—消解—反抗的转向，空间正义意识开始觉醒。通过对城市空间规划改造中的阶级立场分析，论证空间正义与城市发展、阶层融合、社会排斥之间的联系机理，阐明资本主义空间规划与空间生产的固有缺陷，对当代城市的空间规划、贫困问题、社会排斥、城市包容性发展、环境更新与治理等现实问题提供新的视角启发与理路审视。     

论"通知—删除"规则的性质——以平台自治为视角

"通知—删除"规则的法律条文并没有赋予平台自治的空间,但是平台自治的需求已经"凸显".免责条款理论表面上能保障平台自治,但是并不符合我国的实际.归责条款理论是我国的通说,其扼杀了平台自治的空间,司法实践对此虽有调和,但是难以济事.我国的"通知—删除"规则系特定的历史背景下的产物,其在性质上仅仅是行为标准.在侵权行为的认定上,违反"通知—删除"规则的情形并非侵权的充分条件.事实上,这一行为标准的违反在侵权法上的意义仅仅作为主观过错的证据,电商平台可以反证其不具有过错.司法实践中亦有区别对待"通知—删除"规则的违反和侵权之认定的做法.明晰此点方可保障平台自治,同时亦实现电商平台对用户监管之目的.     

科技创新、产业复杂度与经济增长

科技创新能够通过产业复杂度的变化对经济增长产生影响.以1995—2019年世界银行和哈佛大学Atlas数据库的科技创新为研究样本,运用中介效应检验方法,考察科技创新如何通过纺织类、农业类、钻石类、矿产类、金属类、化工类、汽车类、设备类和电子类的产业复杂度变化来影响国民生产总值,从而揭示了科技创新如何通过产业复杂度的变化影响经济增长的机理.研究结果表明:从总体上看,科技创新影响经济增长的过程中,产业复杂度的中介效应量为90.83％,具有显著性,其中农业类、钻石类以及矿产类相关系数为负,其他类别相关系数为正,电子类作用程度最高.区分经济体类型的研究结果显示:产业复杂度的中介效应存在异质性,发达经济体、亚洲经济体、技术密集型经济体存在相对优势,而且科技创新促进经济增长开启了"机会窗口期",后发经济体可以实现"弯道超车".这一研究结论有助于丰富科技创新领域的相关成果,能够为引导产业转型升级方向、提高国家经济增长能力提供理论依据和经验借鉴.     

医疗需求与中国医疗费用增长——基于城乡老年医疗支出差异的视角

在人口老龄化和老年医疗支出城乡差异凸显的背景下,中国医疗费用增长部分源于合理的健康需求。利用中国营养与健康调查1991—2011年的八轮数据,构造出生组跟踪样本,分别考察城乡居民医疗支出的年龄效应,估算城乡老年医疗需求导致的费用上涨,可以发现:城市居民的人均医疗支出随年龄显著增加,但农村居民的人均医疗支出随年龄增长的趋势并不明显。而忽略出生组效应,会低估城乡老年医疗支出的差距。城乡老年医疗支出差距缩小,将导致医疗费用在2010—2030年年均实际增长约5.2%。在控制医疗总费用上涨的同时,医疗保险制度需根据老年医疗需求,调整医疗资源配置结构。     

Testing equality of two normal covariance matrices with monotone missing data

Abstract

The problem of testing equality of two multivariate normal covariance matrices is considered. Assuming that the incomplete data are of monotone pattern, a quantity similar to the Likelihood Ratio Test Statistic is proposed. A satisfactory approximation to the distribution of the quantity is derived. Hypothesis testing based on the approximate distribution is outlined. The merits of the test are investigated using Monte Carlo simulation. Monte Carlo studies indicate that the test is very satisfactory even for moderately small samples. The proposed methods are illustrated using an example.     

Integrating Operational and Organizational Aspects in Interdependent Infrastructure Network Recovery

Managing risk in infrastructure systems implies dealing with interdependent physical networks and their relationships with the natural and societal contexts. Computational tools are often used to support operational decisions aimed at improving resilience, whereas economics‐related tools tend to be used to address broader societal and policy issues in infrastructure management. We propose an optimization‐based framework for infrastructure resilience analysis that incorporates organizational and socioeconomic aspects into operational problems, allowing to understand relationships between decisions at the policy level (e.g., regulation) and the technical level (e.g., optimal infrastructure restoration). We focus on three issues that arise when integrating such levels. First, optimal restoration strategies driven by financial and operational factors evolve differently compared to those driven by socioeconomic and humanitarian factors. Second, regulatory aspects have a significant impact on recovery dynamics (e.g., effective recovery is most challenging in societies with weak institutions and regulation, where individual interests may compromise societal well‐being). And third, the decision space (i.e., available actions) in postdisaster phases is strongly determined by predisaster decisions (e.g., resource allocation). The proposed optimization framework addresses these issues by using: (1) parametric analyses to test the influence of operational and socioeconomic factors on optimization outcomes, (2) regulatory constraints to model and assess the cost and benefit (for a variety of actors) of enforcing specific policy‐related conditions for the recovery process, and (3) sensitivity analyses to capture the effect of predisaster decisions on recovery. We illustrate our methodology with an example regarding the recovery of interdependent water, power, and gas networks in Shelby County, TN (USA), with exposure to natural hazards.     

Cross‐Sectional Psychological and Demographic Associations of Zika Knowledge and Conspiracy Beliefs Before and After Local Zika Transmission

Perceptions of infectious diseases are important predictors of whether people engage in disease‐specific preventive behaviors. Having accurate beliefs about a given infectious disease has been found to be a necessary condition for engaging in appropriate preventive behaviors during an infectious disease outbreak, while endorsing conspiracy beliefs can inhibit preventive behaviors. Despite their seemingly opposing natures, knowledge and conspiracy beliefs may share some of the same psychological motivations, including a relationship with perceived risk and self‐efficacy (i.e., control). The 2015–2016 Zika epidemic provided an opportunity to explore this. The current research provides some exploratory tests of this topic derived from two studies with similar measures, but different primary outcomes: one study that included knowledge of Zika as a key outcome and one that included conspiracy beliefs about Zika as a key outcome. Both studies involved cross‐sectional data collections that occurred during the same two periods of the Zika outbreak: one data collection prior to the first cases of local Zika transmission in the United States (March–May 2016) and one just after the first cases of local transmission (July–August). Using ordinal logistic and linear regression analyses of data from two time points in both studies, the authors show an increase in relationship strength between greater perceived risk and self‐efficacy with both increased knowledge and increased conspiracy beliefs after local Zika transmission in the United States. Although these results highlight that similar psychological motivations may lead to Zika knowledge and conspiracy beliefs, there was a divergence in demographic association.     

Towards Uniformly Efficient Trend Estimation Under Weak/Strong Correlation and Non‐stationary Volatility

In this paper, we consider the deterministic trend model where the error process is allowed to be weakly or strongly correlated and subject to non‐stationary volatility. Extant estimators of the trend coefficient are analysed. We find that under heteroskedasticity, the Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator (with some initial condition) could be less efficient than Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) when the process is highly persistent, whereas it is asymptotically equivalent to OLS when the process is less persistent. An efficient non‐parametrically weighted Cochrane–Orcutt‐type estimator is then proposed. The efficiency is uniform over weak or strong serial correlation and non‐stationary volatility of unknown form. The feasible estimator relies on non‐parametric estimation of the volatility function, and the asymptotic theory is provided. We use the data‐dependent smoothing bandwidth that can automatically adjust for the strength of non‐stationarity in volatilities. The implementation does not require pretesting persistence of the process or specification of non‐stationary volatility. Finite‐sample evaluation via simulations and an empirical application demonstrates the good performance of proposed estimators.     

Efficient Estimation in Heteroscedastic Partially Linear Varying Coefficient Models

This article considers statistical inference for the heteroscedastic partially linear varying coefficient models. We construct an efficient estimator for the parametric component by applying the weighted profile least-squares approach, and show that it is semiparametrically efficient in the sense that the inverse of the asymptotic variance of the estimator reaches the semiparametric efficiency bound. Simulation studies are conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.