Do capital flows drive credit growth and consumption in Central and Eastern Europe?

Domestic credit expansion in CEE economies, fuelled in part by foreign capital inflows, helped increase household welfare before the 2008 financial crisis caused a contraction across the region. How strong are the linkages between the current account, domestic credit and consumer spending? This study compiles a quarterly dataset of domestic credit as a share of GDP for 11 CEE European Union members and isolates structural breaks in the series’ growth rates that often align with the 2008 crisis. Vector autoregressive methods, particularly impulse response functions, show that increased current-account deficits lead to increased consumption in six of the 11 countries and increased credit growth in three, and that shocks to credit growth increase consumption in six countries. Capital inflows significantly increase consumption through domestic credit in Slovenia, while the Baltics show a large share of significant effects.     

Price Effects on Compound Commodities

We examine the effect of simultaneous price changes on the total demand for a group of goods, which we call a compound commodity. Specifically, we consider unit and proportional cost components (e.g., taxes, transportation costs) imposed on compound commodities. If the unit cost is positive, then the proportional cost raises the relative price of the more expensive good, and thus induces substitution towards the less expensive good within this group. Then, the substitution effect of the proportional cost for a compound commodity is non‐negative if and only if the compound commodity and the other goods are, on average, not strongly substitutable.     

Road safety determinants in low and middle income countries

The objective of this article is to summarize and review the literature on the determinants of road traffic injuries and fatalities, to identify the relevant research gaps in particular for low and middle income countries. We also present a cross-country analysis of the determinants of road traffic injuries and fatalities that take into account a wide range of potential environmental, economic and social factors. The present study focused on differences based on the level of development. The goal was to identify relevant commonalities that may assist in the creation of road safety policies common to countries at a similar level of development. The countries were divided according to the level of gross national income per capita, and these income-level groups were the primary units of interest. The results presented here focus on the differences by income level.     

锚企业与科技新城共生模式研究:以阿里巴巴和杭州未来科技城为例

以阿里巴巴和杭州未来科技城为例，采用Logistic模型探讨锚企业与科技新城共生模式，结果表明：总体而言，阿里巴巴和未来科技城属于互利共生模式，阿里巴巴成长会促进未来科技城发展，而未来科技城发展也会反哺阿里巴巴的成长。2013-2016年两者共生系数之间的差值不断缩小，表明阿里巴巴和杭州未来科技城的共生模式从偏利共生转向互利共生。     

Is DNA fingerprinting the gold standard for estimation of adoption and impacts of improved lentil varieties?

In the early 1980s, disease susceptibility in short-season lentil landraces began to limit productivity in areas where relay cropping took place in Bangladesh. Since then, several improved high-yielding lentil varieties, which are resistant to rust and blight and suitable in the relay cropping system, have been released jointly by national and international research centers. This study used three methods, namely a panel of experts, a survey of 1000 households where the respondents named the variety they used, and DNA fingerprinting of seed samples collected from all lentil plots cultivated by survey households to estimate adoption. Double hurdle and instrumental variables regression methods were applied to the household survey and DNA fingerprinting data to identify determinants of adoption and measure their impacts. Of particular interest was whether estimates of adoption, determinants of adoption and impacts varied by method of variety identification. Results showed that the expert panel overestimated the adoption of more recent varieties while about 89% of the farmer-reported varieties were accurate, as verified by DNA fingerprinting. DNA fingerprinting appears to have little advantage for estimating the level of adoption in this case, where few varieties of lentils are found, local variety names do not exist, and most seed is obtained through a formal system. However, even under these conditions, determinants of adoption vary by identification method, and use of farmer-reported information on the variety can lead to erroneous conclusions about determinants of adoption. Because recent breeding efforts have focused on taste and cooking considerations, yield impacts were not significantly different from zero.     

Tales from tails: On the empirical distributions of forecasting errors and their implication to risk

When evaluating the performances of time series extrapolation methods, both researchers and practitioners typically focus on the average or median performance according to some specific error metric, such as the absolute error or the absolute percentage error. However, from a risk-assessment point of view, it is far more important to evaluate the distributions of such errors, and especially their tails. For instance, a lack of normality and symmetry in error distributions can have significant implications for decision making, such as in stock control. Moreover, frequently these distributions can only be constructed empirically, as they may be the result of a computationally-intensive non-parametric approach, such as an artificial neural network. This study proposes an approach for evaluating the empirical distributions of forecasting methods and uses it to assess eleven popular time series extrapolation approaches across two different datasets (M3 and ForeDeCk). The results highlight some very interesting tales from the tails.     

国土空间用途的权衡决策方法研究

研究目的:探索国土空间用途冲突协调路径,为中国"多规合一"及国土空间规划提供理论与方法指导。研究方法:在分析冲突根源的基础上建立国土空间权衡决策模型,构建"战略理性+技术理性+沟通理性"的国土空间权衡决策模式,并以丰县为例开展实证研究。研究结果:(1)国土空间利用的冲突本质上是利益相关者之间的利益冲突,只有利益权衡,没有利益优化;(2)国土空间权衡决策准则、国土空间价值评估、价值权衡和沟通定权共同组成国土空间权衡决策模式;(3)实证研究表明:经济发展战略下丰县镇村、农业、生态空间占比分别为18.51%、74.20%、7.29%,粮食安全战略下占比分别为16.07%、76.66%、7.27%,生态文明战略下占比分别为17.88%、69.06%、13.06%,权衡结果较合理。研究结论:国土空间权衡决策受国家战略驱动、以沟通为基础、以技术为手段,可有效解决国土空间用途冲突问题。     

Why Distinguish Between Statistics and Mathematical Statistics–The Case of Swedish Academia

A separation between the academic subjects statistics and mathematical statistics has existed in Sweden almost as long as there have been statistics professors. The same distinction has not been maintained in other countries. Why has it been kept for so long in Sweden, and what consequences may it have had? In May 2015, it was 100 years since Mathematical Statistics was formally established as an academic discipline at a Swedish university where Statistics had existed since the turn of the century. We give an account of the debate in Lund and elsewhere about this division during the first decades after 1900 and present two of its leading personalities. The Lund University astronomer (and mathematical statistician) C. V. L. Charlier was a leading proponent for a position in mathematical statistics at the university. Charlier's adversary in the debate was Pontus Fahlbeck, professor in political science and statistics, who reserved the word statistics for ‘statistics as a social science’. Charlier not only secured the first academic position in Sweden in mathematical statistics for his former PhD student Sven Wicksell but also demonstrated that a mathematical statistician can be influential in matters of state, finance as well as in different natural sciences. Fahlbeck saw mathematical statistics as a set of tools that sometimes could be useful in his brand of statistics. After a summary of the organisational, educational and scientific growth of the statistical sciences in Sweden that has taken place during the last 50 years, we discuss what effects the Charlier–Fahlbeck divergence might have had on this development.