Translating cross-lagged effects into incidence rates and risk ratios: The case of psychosocial safety climate and depression

Longitudinal studies are the gold standard of empirical work and stress research whenever experiments are not plausible. Frequently, scales are used to assess risk factors and their consequences, and cross-lagged effects are estimated to determine possible risks. Methods to translate cross-lagged effects into risk ratios to facilitate risk assessment do not yet exist, which creates a divide between psychological and epidemiological work stress research. The aim of the present paper is to demonstrate how cross-lagged effects can be used to assess the risk ratio of different levels of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) in organisations, an important psychosocial risk for the development of depression. We used available longitudinal evidence from the Australian Workplace Barometer (N?=?1905) to estimate cross-lagged effects of PSC on depression. We applied continuous time modelling to obtain time-scalable cross effects. These were further investigated in a 4-year Monte Carlo simulation, which translated them into 4-year incident rates. Incident rates were determined by relying on clinically relevant 2-year periods of depression. We suggest a critical value of PSC?=?26 (corresponding to ?1.4 SD), which is indicative of more than 100% increased incidents of persistent depressive disorder in 4-year periods compared to average levels of PSC across 4 years.     

Measuring agreement between two statistics with applications to age standardization

Summary.  We detail a general method for measuring agreement between two statistics. An application is two ratios of directly standardized rates which differ only by the choice of the standard. If the statistics have a high value for the coefficient of agreement then the expected squared difference between the statistics is small relative to the variance of the average of the two statistics, and inferences vary little by changing statistics. The estimation of a coefficient of agreement between two statistics is not straightforward because there is only one pair of observed values, each statistic calculated from the data. We introduce estimators of the coefficient of agreement for two statistics and discuss their use, especially as applied to functions of standardized rates.     

顺应历史发展潮流,重塑多元价值理论--论深化改革与促进发展的经济学价值论基础

具有历史局限性的劳动价值论受到实践挑战并被其他理论超越是不可避免的.社会经济发展的条件、动力和主体多元化了,与其相适应的经济价值论也必然要多元化.商品价值的本质是人的需求同商品之间的关系.商品价值的决定是一个多层次多元的综合体系,它由"天人合一"论、供求均衡论、生产要素论和需求要素论所构成,劳动价值论只是其中的"特例".生产要素贡献论与合法产权收益论是市场经济条件下必然的收益分配原则,它对"一家独享"和"吃大锅饭"的不平等都是排斥的.劳动价值论所认定的剥削只是一种极端情形,而依据多元价值论则能对剥削作出更具普遍性的说明.资本的性质及作用取决于它的来源和使用方式.中国现阶段的大多数民营企业家为国为民做出了重大贡献,不应一概斥之为剥削阶级."全心全意依靠工人阶级"的实质是指始终要依靠先进生产力的代表,而不是固定不变的哪部分人群,它同"科学技术是第一生产力"应当是统一的.随着生产发展和社会进步,中产阶级壮大不可避免,但这不是坏事,毕竟我们革命和建设不是要制造更多无产者.中产阶级在社会阶级或阶层构成中占相当大的一个多数是实现社会稳定和发展的重要条件.     

Statistical Distributions of Daily Breathing Rates for Narrow Age Groups of Infants and Children

Children may be more susceptible to toxicity from some environmental chemicals than adults. This susceptibility may occur during narrow age periods (windows), which can last from days to years depending on the toxicant. Breathing rates specific to narrow age periods are useful to assess inhalation dose during suspected windows of susceptibility. Because existing breathing rates used in risk assessment are typically for broad age ranges or are based on data not representative of the population, we derived daily breathing rates for narrow age ranges of children designed to be more representative of the current U.S. children's population. These rates were derived using the metabolic conversion method of Layton (1993) and energy intake data adjusted to represent the U.S. population from a relatively recent dietary survey (CSFII 1994–1996, 1998). We calculated conversion factors more specific to children than those previously used. Both nonnormalized (L/day) and normalized (L/kg-day) breathing rates were derived and found comparable to rates derived using energy estimates that are accurate for the individuals sampled but not representative of the population. Estimates of breathing rate variability within a population can be used with stochastic techniques to characterize the range of risk in the population from inhalation exposures. For each age and age-gender group, we present the mean, standard error of the mean, percentiles (50th, 90th, and 95th), geometric mean, standard deviation, 95th percentile, and best-fit parametric models of the breathing rate distributions. The standard errors characterize uncertainty in the parameter estimate, while the percentiles describe the combined interindividual and intra-individual variability of the sampled population. These breathing rates can be used for risk assessment of subchronic and chronic inhalation exposures of narrow age groups of children.     

我国第三产业发展及劳动就业增长的实证分析

首先介绍了我国第三产业发展的现状 ,然后通过计算第三产业发展过程中的劳动就业贡献率和就业弹性 ,分析了我国第三产业发展吸纳劳动力的潜力。最后对第三产业发展及扩大就业提出几点建议。     

论党的十七大的重大理论贡献

党的十七大的理论贡献在于，首次提出“中国特色社会主义理论体系”这一新概念，有力地回答了在改革开放关键时期“举什么旗，走什么路”的根本问题；明确界定了科学发展观的内涵和全面建设小康社会的新要求，提出了生态文明理念，有力地回答了在21世纪头20年“怎么举好旗，怎么走好路”的基本问题；突出强调推动中国特色社会主义民主政治制度和以民生为重点的社会建设，有力地回答了“如何发展社会主义政治制度，如何保障和改善民生”两大难题。     

Diagnostics for dependence within time series extremes

Summary. The analysis of extreme values within a stationary time series entails various assumptions concerning its long- and short-range dependence. We present a range of new diagnostic tools for assessing whether these assumptions are appropriate and for identifying structure within extreme events. These tools are based on tail characteristics of joint survivor functions but can be implemented by using existing estimation methods for extremes of univariate independent and identically distributed variables. Our diagnostic aids are illustrated through theoretical examples, simulation studies and by application to rainfall and exchange rate data. On the basis of these diagnostics we can explain characteristics that are found in the observed extreme events of these series and also gain insight into the properties of events that are more extreme than those observed.     

Deposit Insurance,Institutions, and Bank Interest Rates

Many recent institutional reforms of the financial system have relied on the introduction of an explicit scheme of deposit insurance. This instrument aims at two main targets, contributing to systemic stability and protecting depositors. However, it may also affect the interest rate spread in the banking system, which can be viewed as an indicator of either inefficiency or market power in this financial segment. This paper provides an empirical investigation of the effect of deposit insurance and other institutional and economic variables on bank interest rates across countries. We find that deposit insurance increases the lending–deposit spread in banking. The main effect seems to arise not from the deposit side though, but from an increase in the lending rate. We interpret this result as evidence of the presence of moral hazard problems related to this instrument. We also find that higher quality of institutions is associated with lower spreads, thus contributing to eroding sources of market power in the banking sector.     

Deconvolution with supersmooth distributions

Nonparametric deconvolution problems require one to recover an unknown density when the data are contaminated with errors. Optimal global rates of convergence are found under the weighted L_p-loss (1 ≤ p ≤ ∞). It appears that the optimal rates of convergence are extremely low for supersmooth error distributions. To resolve this difficulty, we examine how high the noise level can be for deconvolution to be feasible, and for the deconvolution estimate to be as good as the ordinary density estimate. It is shown that if the noise level is not too high, nonparametric Gaussian deconvolution can still be practical. Several simulation studies are also presented.     

黑龙江省工业资本产出贡献率的实证分析

提高老工业基地的经济增长水平,是一个意义深远的课题。黑龙江省老工业基地发展相对落后的原因在于工业实收资本结构的不合理,国家资本偏高,个人资本绝对性偏低,单位个人资本效率是单位国家资本的五倍。法人资本的多层代理也是造成黑龙江省工业发展相对落后的原因之一。对此,应妥善解决委托代理失灵问题,大力促进民营资本的发展,加快国有经济布局的战略性调整。