ON INTERNAL MARKETS IN THE N.H.S.

Professor Alain Enthoven has suggested the development of 'internal markets' in the NHS Patricia Day and Professor Rudolf Klein, of the University of Bath, argue for the encouragement of latent potential within the NHS Nick Bosanquet, of the University of York, reinforces their call for increased managerial discretion to improve efficiency Dr David Green, of the IEA, insists that commercial incentive will have a more bracing effect than continued government control     

Ranking and weak consistency in the A.H.P. context

The actual ranking of a set of alternatives is obtainable in a simple way assuming that the matrixA of pairwise comparisons isr-transilive. We show that, in some cases of inconsistency, the weights assigned to the alternatives by means of some well-known methods, suggested by the A.H.P., do not agree with the ranking. Further we introduce a condition, theweak consistency ofA, that ensures the mentioned methods provide weights according with the ranking.     

Discussion of paper by H. Li & G.S. Maddala

Some comments are made concerning variations on the bootstrap methods in the paper.     

A comparative study of bureaucratic corruption in Latin America and the U.S.A.

The starting point of this paper is a conceptual model of bureaucratic corruption, based on the assumption that bureaucrats (a) maximize personal utilities, and (b) control a monopoly in the production of certain goods and services. This conceptual model leads to a system of three equations representing demand, supply and market clearance of the goods and services supplied by the bureaucracy. Using the market clearance equation, an equation for the level of corruption in a bureaucracy is obtained. The conceptual model helps to specify the signs of the partial derivatives of the level of corruption with respect to the explanatory variables. Two sets of data are used to test the model. The first refers to levels of corruption in the bureaucracies of 17 Latin American countries, while the second deals with levels of corruption of Federal officials working in individual states in the U.S.A., state officials, and local officials. The conclusions obtained thus far using the statistical analysis confirm the expectations derived with the conceptual model.     

美国《复苏与再投资法案》浅析

浅析了美国<复苏与再投资法案>的优势:先进的制度设计,促使投资尽早起效;严格的程序要求,保证投资准确到位;监管方式的多样,确保投资全面落实.     

A Conversation with James O. Ramsay

Jim Ramsay was born on September 5, 1942, in Prince George, British Columbia. He pursued undergraduate studies at the University of Alberta, where he completed a BEd in 1964 with a major in English and a minor in mathematics. He then specialized in statistics and psychometry, earning a PhD in psychology from Princeton University in 1966. After holding a temporary lectureship in the Department of Psychology at University College London for one year, he joined the Department of Psychology at McGill University, where he rose through the academic ranks. He was chair of his department from 1986 to 1989 and spent sabbatical leaves in Cambridge, Grenoble, and Toulouse. He was named professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2007. Jim is the author of four influential books and over 100 peer‐reviewed articles in statistical and psychometric journals. He developed much of the statistical theory behind multidimensional scaling and is widely recognized as the founder of functional data analysis. Three of his papers were read to the Royal Statistical Society, and another won The Canadian Journal of Statistics 2000 Best Paper Award. The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) awarded him a Gold Medal for research in 1998 and an honorary membership in 2012. Jim was president of the Psychometric Society in 1981–82 and president of the SSC in 2002–03. The following conversation took place at Jim's home in Ottawa, Ontario, on March 14 and April 4, 2012.     

Errors, robustness, and the fourth quadrant

The paper presents evidence that econometric techniques based on variance–L² norm–are flawed and do not replicate. The result is un-computability of the role of tail events. The paper proposes a methodology to calibrate decisions to the degree (and computability) of forecast error. It classifies decision payoffs in two types: simple (true/false or binary) and complex (higher moments); and randomness into type-1 (thin tails) and type-2 (true fat tails), and shows the errors for the estimation of small probability payoffs for type 2 randomness. The fourth quadrant is where payoffs are complex with type-2 randomness. We propose solutions to mitigate the effect of the fourth quadrant, based on the nature of complex systems.