USING EL NIÑO-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION CLIMATE DATA TO IMPROVE FOOD POLICY PLANNING IN INDONESIA

Despite the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on climate in the Indo-Pacific region, models linking ENSO-based climate variability to Indonesian cereal production are not well developed. This study measures connections among sea-surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs), rainfall, and Indonesian rice and corn production from 1971 to 1998. Year-to-year August SSTA fluctuations explain about half the interannual variance in paddy production during the main (wet) season. These effects are cumulative for rice: during strong El Niño years, wet season production shortfalls are not made up subsequently. For corn, the cumulative area sown is actually higher in El Niño years than La Niña years. Indonesia's paddy production varies on average by 1.4 million tons for every 1°C change in August SSTAs. The paper illustrates how an SSTA model might assist policy makers with budgetary processes, and private sector cereal traders with framing production expectations.     

Road traffic injury among child motorcyclists in Vientiane Capital,Laos: a cross-sectional study using a hospital-based injury surveillance database

This study investigated the distribution of motorcyclists, including drivers and passengers, who were involved in road traffic crashes and admitted to hospital in Vientiane Capital, Laos. The focus was on child motorcycle drivers and passengers under 15 years. A hospital-based injury surveillance database in Vientiane Capital was used. The surveillance was performed in two hospitals. From 1 September to 31 December 2009, 3968 patients were admitted to the participating hospitals with road traffic injuries. Patients under 15 years accounted for 10.8% (427/3968). The majority of patients under 15 years were motorcycle drivers or passengers (71.7%, 306/427). Child motorcyclists including drivers and passengers were less likely to wear a helmet than adults (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 0.3, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.2–0.5, for children 10–14 years; adjusted OR: 0.1, 95% CI, 0.05–0.4, for children under 10 years). It is suggested that stricter regulation enforcement for child motorcycle drivers and passengers may be needed. In addition, barriers against wearing helmets for motorcycle drivers and passengers in Laos should also be examined in further studies.     

Let's take a break: Trends and cycles in US real GDP

Trend-cycle decompositions for US real GDP such as the unobserved components models, the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition, the Hodrick-Prescott filter and others yield very different cycles which bear little resemblance to the NBER chronology, ascribes much movements to the trend leaving little to the cycle, and some imply a negative correlation between the noise to the cycle and the trend. We argue that these features are artifacts created by the neglect of a change in the slope of the trend function. Once this is accounted for, all methods yield the same cycle with a trend that is non-stochastic except for a few periods around 1973. The cycle is more important in magnitude than previously reported and it accords well with the NBER chronology. Our results are corroborated using an alternative trend-cycle decomposition based on a generalized unobserved components models with errors having a mixture of normals distribution for both the slope of the trend function and the cyclical component.     

The evolution of stock market efficiency in the US: a non-Bayesian time-varying model approach

A non-Bayesian time-varying model is developed by introducing the concept of the degree of market efficiency that varies over time. This model may be seen as a reflection of the idea that continuous technological progress alters the trading environment over time. With new methodologies and a new measure of the degree of market efficiency, we examine whether the US stock market evolves over time. In particular, a time-varying autoregressive (TV-AR) model is employed. Our main findings are: (i) the US stock market has evolved over time and the degree of market efficiency has cyclical fluctuations with a considerably long periodicity, from 30 to 40 years; and (ii) the US stock market has been efficient with the exception of four times in our sample period: during the long recession of 1873–1879; the recession of 1902–1904; the New Deal era; and the recession of 1957–1958 and soon after it. It is then shown that our results are partly consistent with the view of behavioural finance.     

International stock market efficiency: a non-Bayesian time-varying model approach

This article develops a non-Bayesian methodology to analyse the time-varying structure of international linkages and market efficiency in G7 countries. We consider a non-Bayesian time-varying vector autoregressive (TV-VAR) model, and apply it to estimate the joint degree of market efficiency in the sense of Fama (1970, 1991). Our empirical results provide a new perspective that the international linkages and market efficiency change over time and that their behaviours correspond well to historical events of the international financial system.     

Apportionment Behind the Veil of Uncertainty

Apportionment of representatives is a basic rule of everyday politics. By definition, this basic rule is a constitutional stage problem and should be decided behind the veil of uncertainty. To bring apportionment closer to quotas, we introduce f‐divergence for utilitarianism and Bregman divergence for consistent optimization. Even in our less restricted condition, we find that we must use α‐divergence for optimization and show that the minimization of α‐divergence induces the same divisor methods that correspond to the maximization of the Kolm–Atkinson social welfare function (or the expected utility function), which is bounded by constant relative risk aversion.     

Evaluating effects on the flow of electrical and electronic equipment and energy consumption due to alternative consumption patterns in China

In this paper, we evaluated the effects of consumer’s behavioural changes on usage and disposal of home appliances. With the model to estimate the product circulation, first we conducted the sensitivity analysis with the six parameters, namely urbanisation, household size, Gini coefficient, product lifetime and selection rate of used product and high energy efficiency product. Then, secondly we evaluated CO₂ emission and e-waste generation from four consumers’ different behavioural patterns, which are named as ‘Business As Usual’ (BAU), ‘Rapid Cycling’ (RC), ‘Chain of Users’ (CU) and ‘Quality and Wisdom’ (QW). As a result, the QW scenario was the best lifestyle in both criteria. Further, RC scenario had an advantage on the reduction in e-waste generation in one hand, but CU scenario reduced more CO₂ emission. During the transition era of China from materially poor to rich, it could be one of the solutions to utilise energy-efficient second-hand product to improve the living standards of the poor and replace technologically inferior product stocks in poor households.