Detecting seasonal unit roots in a structural time series model

In this paper, we propose to detect seasonal unit roots within the context of a structural time series model. Such a model is often found to be useful in practice. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that our method works well. We illustrate our approach for several quarterly macroeconomic time series variables.     

“He Said, She Said”: Assessing Discrepancies in Husbands'' and Wives'' Reports on the Division of Household Labor

Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) data, the discrepancy in the husband's and wife's reports on household work is examined. I found that husbands tend to overestimate their own contribution (or wives underestimate the husbands' contribution), but wives do not. Husbands tend to overestimate (or wives underestimate) their wives' contribution to shopping and paying bills, suggesting the husbands' inefficiency to perform these tasks may bias their estimates. To examine various sources of the interspouse response discrepancy, multiple regression analyses are conducted. The relationship between the interspouse response discrepancy in the husband's household work time and the attitudinal variables suggests that our estimates are affected by social desirability. The relationship between the discrepancy in the wife's time and both spouses' family-role attitudes indicates that the resentment felt by each spouse in performing household work may bias their estimates in their own favor. The wife's perceived fairness is related to the interspouse discrepancy in the husband's relative share of household work. Length of marriage generally decreases the interspouse response discrepancy, suggesting that the knowledge each spouse has of each other is an important factor. Finally, various measures of the division of household labor utilizing one or two spouses' responses are regressed upon the same set of predictors. The husband's relative share, rather than each spouse's absolute time, and both spouses' combined estimate, rather than either spouse's, are better explained by the various predictors.     

Decision Support System of Truck Routing and Refueling: A Dual‐Objective Approach

The variable‐route vehicle‐refueling problem (VRVRP) is a variant of the network‐flow problem which seeks, for a vehicle traveling from origin s to destination d, both the route and the refueling policy (sequence of fuel stations to use between s and d) that jointly minimize the fuel cost of operating the vehicle. Commercial‐grade decision support systems that solve the VRVRP are widely used by motor carriers, but they provide heuristic solutions only. Exact methods are available from the academic side, but because they focus on minimizing costs, they tend to cut fuel costs in exchange for increased vehicle miles (which can increase fuel consumptions and pollutants emission). We propose a new approach to the VRVRP that allows carriers to jointly seek the two possibly conflicting goals; minimizing fuel cost and vehicle miles. Computational testing shows that our approach (i) outperforms the commercial software products in both goals, and (ii) finds solutions that require significantly less vehicle miles than those given by the exact method proposed in the academic literature, without incurring unacceptable increases in fuel cost.     

共生教育

现在 ,各国都在以经济现代化为目标 ,尽可能发展和引进现代科学技术及其合理的思想观念 ,实现产业化 ,使国家富强 ,从而形成全球一体化的大交易圈。共生教育 ,就是讲授人们如何在这个大交易圈中生存的教育     

Sociological Determinants of Life Satisfaction in Japan: The Roles of Gender, Family, and Work

Abstract  This is one of the first studies on causes and correlates of life satisfaction among Japanese, based on the theoretical framework of Thibaut and Kelley (1959) on satisfaction and a nationally representative sample of Japanese adults. Emphasized are the effects of such demographic variables as gender, marital status, age, and work-related characteristics on life satisfaction. It is found that Japanese women are more satisfied with their lives than are men on the average. This difference is not explained by the gender difference in employment statuses. When examined for each employment status category, women still show higher life satisfaction than men on the average, except those employed full-time.
While widowed women show lower life satisfaction, never-married and divorced men show the same pattern. The detrimental effect of divorce on life satisfaction among women disappears when economic circumstances variables are controlled for. Age is found to be strongly related to life satisfaction, particularly among men. A non-linear effect of age indicates both family responsibility and job responsibility decrease life satisfaction for Japanese men and women.
The theoretical framework presented in American literature on the subject is largely supported in the present analysis with Japanese data. Rather than absolute levels of economic and/or social indicators, the salience each person places on them is found to be critical for life satisfaction. Given the cognitive definition of satisfaction adopted here which emphasizes comparisons, these results indicate the validity of this theoretical perspective.     

On mantel-haenszel type estimators in simple nested case-control studies

We are concerned with nested case-control studies in this article. For proportional hazards model, a class of over-all estimators of hazard ratios is presented when simple samples are drawn from risk sets. These estimators have the form of the Mantel-Haenszel estimator of odds ratio, and are consistent not only for large strata, but also for sparse data. Consistent estimators of the variances of the proposed hazard ratio estimators are also developed. An example is given to illustrate the proposed estimators.     

Trends in the Relative Influence of Education and Income on Highbrow Taste, 1982–2012

Although numerous studies have confirmed the separate effects of economic and cultural capital on arts participation, research focusing on the cumulative and interactive effects of economic and cultural capital through the creation of taste publics is limited. Using data from the United States (Survey of Public Participation in the Arts [1982–2012]), this research integrates economic and cultural capital—measured as income and education—into the analysis of taste, creates taste publics, and examines their association with highbrow arts participation over time. We find that the effects of economic and cultural capital on highbrow arts participation decreased between 1982 and 2012, and American publics seem to have converged across both types of capital. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

A study on the influence of headphones in auditory perceptual function

The focus of this study is a human's ability to make full use of listening and hearing. This ability consists of dividing auditory information into a signal and a noise. To evaluate the risk of using headphones, the study investigated the auditory perception when a warning sound is given in the presence of environmental noise.     

The Gargantuan Project and Modernity in Provincial Thailand

Many leaders in Asia have competed to build public goods of superlative size. Focusing on an observation tower in Suphanburi, an agriculture-based rural province of Thailand, this paper shows that a seemingly wasteful and pretentious public project serves as the site where collective pride is forged. The tower, the tallest observation tower in provincial Thailand, has made an otherwise lacklustre and ‘backward’ Suphanburi famous throughout the country. The tower has thus become the unique symbol of Suphanburi's modernity, and many residents have come to identify with it as such. This paper highlights a ceremony held by Banharn Silpa-archa, the creator of the tower and Member of Parliament from Suphanburi, to advertise the distinctiveness of the tower and to mobilise provincial pride around it.     

Is It the Government’s Responsibility to Reduce Income Inequality? An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis of Public Opinion toward Redistributive Policy in the United States, 1978 to 2016

This study examines age, period, and cohort (APC) effects on changing opinions among the American public toward the federal government’s responsibility for income redistribution. More specifically, we use the hierarchical age–period–cohort (HAPC) model to analyze time periods and birth cohorts as contextual variables and age as an individual-level variable to address the identification problem inherent in APC analysis. Our results show that while cohort effects on public opinion toward redistributive policy exist, such effects are explained by individual-level compositional differences among cohorts, and while period effects are evident, particular trends in that regard are difficult to discern. What our results make abundantly clear, however, is the significant impact of age on opinions toward redistributive policy. As people age, they become significantly less supportive of federal redistribution policies, a relationship that is robust in the presence of cohort and period effects as well as a full range of controls. In the context of a rapidly aging population, the implication is that more conservative policy preferences linked to older age provide little reason to believe that mass support for government redistribution is in the offing.