Interpreting DNA Evidence: A Review

The paper provides a review of current issues relating to the use of DNA profiling in forensic science. A short historical section gives the main statistical milestones that occurred during a rapid development of DNA technology and operational uses. Greater detail is then provided for interpretation issues involving STR DNA profiles, including:

• – methods that take account of population substructure in DNA calculations;

• – parallel work carried out by the US National Research Council;

• – the move away from multiple independence testing in favour of experiments that demonstrate the robustness of casework procedures;

• – the questionable practice of source attribution 'with reasonable scientific certainty';

• – the effect on the interpretation of profiles obtained under increasingly sensitive techniques, the LCN technique in particular;

• – the use of DNA profiles as an intelligence tool;

• – the interpretation of DNA mixtures.

Experience of presenting DNA evidence within UK courts is also discussed. The paper then summarises a generic interpretation framework based on the concept of likelihood ratio within a hierarchy of propositions. Finally the use of Bayesian networks to interpret DNA evidence is reviewed.     

Comment:The Statistical Relationship between the Money Supply and the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement

A controversy has recently broken out as to whether the PSBR influences the money supply in the UK. Clearly if this relationship does not exist much of the basis of the government's macroeconomic strategy falls away since the government is acting on the assumption that by controlling the PSBR it will be able to control money supply growth and hence inflation in the medium term. This argument has been forcibly stated in the recent Green Paper on Monetary Control (Cmnd 7858) and is enshrined in the Medium-term Financial Strategy that was announced in the March Budget.     

火电厂节能降耗的必要性与措施研究

实现工业化生产是当前国家积极倡导的发展策略,但在走工业化道路的同时也使得企业乃至个人的环境保护意识变得更加薄弱。火电厂是我国电能产生的重要基地,不仅为社会主义现代化建设提供足够的能量,也为人们的日常生活带来方便。但由于火电厂发电是以各种燃料燃烧为前提,在燃烧之后会出现大量的工业＂三废＂,这既是严重的环境污染问题,也是重大的经济能源问题。文章针对火电厂运行过程中出现的环境问题进行总结,提出积极倡导节能降耗的理念,并制定合理的措施。     

THE AUTUMN STATEMENT

The Treasury's forecast, published with the Autumn Statement, has been widely heralded as showing a surprisingly cheerful picture for next year as far as both output and inflation are concerned. In fact it is close to the forecast which we produced in October. Here we compare the two forecasts and then consider how our forecast is affected when we adopt the Treasury assumptions on asset sales and the exchange rate. We find that the Treasury is more optimistic than we are on investment and that holding the exchange rate - which is needed to produce the official inflation forecast - requires rather higher interest rates than we assumed in October and this widens the gap between our forecast for GDP and the Treasury's forecast.
We also consider how the government should respond to lower North Sea oil revenues. Taking a permanent income approach, we suggest that the PSBR should be allowed to rise by £2bn on this basis. The same approach, however, suggests that an extra £71/2bn of asset sales should be used to cut the PSBR not taxes. On balance therefore this analysis indicates that next year's PSBR target should be lowered by £1/2bn from the £71/2 bn contained in the 1985 MTFS.     

An analysis of repressed inflation in two transition economies

We construct a simple model that tests for repressed inflation by estimating a true rate of inflation that explains behavior of observed money demand. We estimate the model using quarterly data for Czechoslovakia and Poland. Although our results should be viewed as preliminary, given the imperfect nature of our data, we do have strong evidence that, prior to 1991, there was considerable repressed inflation in Poland, while there was essentially no repressed inflation in Czechoslovakia.This paper was funded by a World Bank project on formerly planned economies. We would like to thank Jong-goo Park for suggesting the topic, and Fabrizio Coricelli and Adnan Mazarei for helpful discussions. The views expressed here are our own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the World Bank.     

Forecast Summary

Backed by the lowest interest rates in fifteen years and a competitive exchange rate, we see the economy moving off the corrugated bottom of last year and recovery gathering pace as this year progresses. We expect output to rise 1.4 per cent this year, 0.5 per cent more than we forecast in October when we were expecting a far more cautious approach on interest rates, and 3 per cent in 1994. Here we have factored in another 1 per cent cut in base rates to coincide with the Budget on 16 March but this may prove to be the floor, especially if, as is rumoured, the Prime Minister has vetoed tax increases in the Budget for fear of derailing a fragile recovery. By the end of the year, however, we expect the trend in interest rates to be upwards to halt a sliding exchange rate and to cap the devaluation-induced price increases that will be feeding into domestic prices by then. On this basis we believe that inflation can be contained at 4 per cent underlying this year, 5 per cent in 1994 - outside the Chancellor's target range. While we are more sanguine than before on the outlook for output and inflation, major problems remain on the PSBR and the balance of payments. Beginning in the December Budget, the Government will have to raise taxes to avoid a debt spiral on the budget deficit and channel resources into net exports. Even on the basis of a £4bn tax hike in the first of the unified Budgets, we expect the PSBR to run along close to £50bn and the current account deficit in the £15bn-20bn range.     

When Promoters Like Scalpers

If a monopoly supplies a perishable good, such as tickets to a performance, and is unable to price discriminate within a period, the monopoly may benefit from the potential entry of resellers. If the monopoly attempts to intertemporally price discriminate, the equilibrium in the game among buyers is indeterminate when the resellers are not allowed to enter, and the monopoly's problem is not well defined. An arbitrarily small amount of heterogeneity of information among the buyers leads to a unique equilibrium. We show how the potential entry of resellers alters this equilibrium.

The moment a performance begins, that seat is dead … . It's like fruit. It's perishable.

— Jeffrey Seller, producer of Rent . New York Times , July 20, 2003.     

Efficient estimation of semiparametric conditional moment models with possibly nonsmooth residuals

This paper considers semiparametric efficient estimation of conditional moment models with possibly nonsmooth residuals in unknown parametric components (θ) and unknown functions (h) of endogenous variables. We show that: (1) the penalized sieve minimum distance (PSMD) estimator can simultaneously achieve root-n asymptotic normality of and nonparametric optimal convergence rate of , allowing for noncompact function parameter spaces; (2) a simple weighted bootstrap procedure consistently estimates the limiting distribution of the PSMD ; (3) the semiparametric efficiency bound formula of [Ai, C., Chen, X., 2003. Efficient estimation of models with conditional moment restrictions containing unknown functions. Econometrica, 71, 1795–1843] remains valid for conditional models with nonsmooth residuals, and the optimally weighted PSMD estimator achieves the bound; (4) the centered, profiled optimally weighted PSMD criterion is asymptotically chi-square distributed. We illustrate our theories using a partially linear quantile instrumental variables (IV) regression, a Monte Carlo study, and an empirical estimation of the shape-invariant quantile IV Engel curves.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Collapsing oil prices and a falling dollar set the background to a Budget in which the Chancellor, hamstrung by lower oil revenues, was seen as having little room for manoeuvre. In fact the sharp fall in the sterling price of oil has provided him with the perfect excuse for not making significant cuts in personal income tax that were largely irrelevant to the needs of the economy. Instead of a boost to household demand we have had, thanks to OPEC, a transfer to companies in the form of a reduction in costs. This should enable them to expand output against a background of falling inflation. Our post-Budget assessment of macroeconomic prospects (Section I), made on the Treasury's assumption of a $15 oil price, shows output growing by 2 1/2 per cent this year and inflation falling below 3 per cent in 1987. We are thus less optimistic than the Treasury about output but more optimistic about inflation. How was the Chancellor able, within the confines of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, to give anything away having lost so much oil revenue? A detailed analysis of the PSBR forecast (Section II) reveals good reasons why non-oil tax revenues should be some £3 1/2n higher than forecast this time last year. But, because we still expect public spending to be above the official figures, our PSBR forecast is £1bn higher than the Treasury's. Although the macroeconomic impact of the Budget was small (especially in relation to that of the fall in oil prices which preceded it), it continued the process of tax reform. We focus, in Section III, on the new proposals to deal with the problem of the pension fund surpluses to which we drew attention in the November issue of Financial Outlook. We conclude that the proposed measures could have a larger effect on tax revenues in the longer term than is indicated by the Treasury's Budget estimates.     

Intra-national Purchasing Power Parity and Balassa–Samuelson Effects in Italy

Abstract

Considering a sample of 71 Italian metropolitan areas, this paper goes beyond the assumption that a unique core inflationary process exists in a macroeconomy. It shows that local long-run inflation rates can display remarkable variability. On the one hand they are negatively correlated with productivity growth; on the other, the less competitive the local retail sector, the higher is long-run inflation.

Parité de pouvoir d'achat intranational et effets Balassa–Samuelson en Italie

Résumé La présente communication, qui examine un échantillon de 71 zones métropolitaines en Italie, va au-delà de l'hypothèse de l'existence, dans une macroéconomie, d'un processus unique d'inflation de base. Elle démontre que les taux d'inflation locaux de longue durée font preuve parfois d'une variabilité remarquable: d'un côté, ils sont en corrélation négative avec l'expansion de la productivité, de l'autre moins le secteur local du commerce au détail est compétitif, plus l'inflation à long terme est élevée.

Paridad de poder adquisitivo intranacional y efectos Balassa–Samuelson en Italia

Extracto Este trabajo, que considera una muestra de 71 áreas metropolitanas italianas, va más allá de suponer que dentro de una macroeconomía existe un único proceso inflacionario básico. Muestra que los índices locales de inflación a largo plazo pueden exhibir una variabilidad significativa. Por una parte, se correlacionan negativamente con el crecimiento de la productividad; por otra parte, cuanto menos competitivo es el sector minorista local, más alta es la inflación a largo plazo.      

Inflation is on the rise,but how far will it go?

• September's sharp rise in inflation is likely to mark the start of a steep ascent, which will likely see the CPI measure peaking above 3% in the middle of next year. The initial momentum will come through base effects but the main thrust will come from the pass‐through of the sharp depreciation of the pound. However, inflation is likely to then fall back rapidly in 2018 to average 2.2%.
• The CPI measure of inflation reached a near two‐year high in September. This was partly a function of last autumn's sharp falls in petrol and energy prices dropping out of the calculation, but it also reflected a continuation of the recent pickup in core pressures.
• The degree to which inflation accelerates from this point will depend upon the pass‐through of the weaker pound. The literature suggests that the maximum impact on inflation will come after a year, but there is some variation in the estimates of the degree of pass‐through. Studies conducted over a long period suggest the degree of pass‐through may have become smaller over time.
• We expect the weak economic backdrop to limit the extent to which the weaker pound pushes up inflation, though we still see the CPI measure averaging 2.7% in 2017, with a brief period in the middle of the year where inflation exceeds 3%, hastening a letter of explanation from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Chancellor. However, we would not see this prospect as a serious impediment to a further rate cut, given that the MPC has made it clear that it is prepared to tolerate such an overshoot.
• Inflation should then drop back through 2018 as sterling recovers and the 2017 acceleration provides powerful base effects. This is somewhat at odds with the Bank of England's latest forecast, which shows inflation lower in 2017 but then accelerating in 2018, implying a much more protracted pass‐through.

     

Tightening the Fiscal and Monetary Controls

The Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) is a new departure in post-war policy-making. As David Smith's Briefing Paper shows the ideas behind it are well rooted in historical experience, but nevertheless it was inevitable that there would be a major element of trial and error in the early years of its use. The experience of 1980-81 however has produced some alarming results. The monetary limits have been drastically exceeded and the PSBR is likely to be far above the original target. There are two possible explanations. Either the control system is gravely defective or the government has deliberately followed the kind of short-term discretionary policies (and has indulged in the kind of ad hoc interventionism) which the strategy was expressly designed to avoid. We believe that both explanations are true. It is also probable that they reinforced each other. The first year of the strategy was likely to be the year of greatest strain. It involved a highly ambitious attempt to reduce inflation at a time when cost pressures from wages and higher energy prices were particularly strong. The strains rapidly revealed the defects in the control system. Since the government was alarmed at the short-term consequences of its policies, it chose to make a virtue of necessity and in effect suspended its commitment to the control of sterling M3. It is possible to look back at 1980 and to say that, in the event, the government's loss of control over its policies was justified as statesmanlike flexibility. But there always appear to be good reasons for sacrificing long-term objectives for short-term expediency. The MTFS was intended to avoid the chronic tendency to accept the easy option. It is essential that in 1981 the commitment to the MTFS should be re-established and that it should be reinforced, as appears to be necessary, by a system of indicators and controls to ensure that the errors of 1980 are not repeated. Otherwise there is a serious risk that the hard-won gains in the fight against inflation will be lost in the economic upturn. In the first part of this Viewpoint we examine what happened to fiscal and monetary policy in 1980 and discuss the general lines that policy should follow in 1981-82. We conclude that in order to get fiscal policy back on course the authorities should aim for a PSBR of £10 bn in 1981-82. In the second part we discuss in more detail the reasons why monetary policy went so badly astray in 1980, focusing particularly on the role of the Bank of England. We argue that just as ‘dirty floating’ (i.e. the pursuit of exchange rate objectives) may threaten the monetary targets, so ‘dirty monetarism’ (i.e. the pursuit of interest rate objectives) may prove an even greater threat. We conclude that the discretionary activities of the Bank of England contributed to the excessive monetary growth in 1980, and that it is necessary to ensure that in future the Bank should conduct its policy on a non-discretionary basis.     

Entrepreneurial Boldness and Excessive Investment

We analyze investment by a population of hyperbolic discounting entrepreneurs. In order to avoid inefficient procrastination, agents with good prospects about their chances of success may choose to forego free information and to invest boldly. This explains an excessive level of investment in the economy. Building on this observation, we show that low risk-free interest rates favor bold entrepreneurship and entry mistakes. Furthermore, public intervention can be socially desirable: Forcing agents to acquire information before deciding whether to invest may reduce competitive interest rates and may be beneficial for all individuals in the economy .

And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.                      Hamlet , Act 3: Scene 1.

     

Introduction: Auditors' Legal Liability in the United States

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UK inflation set to tumble below target by autumn

• ? We expect CPI inflation to slow markedly this year, dropping below the 2% target by the autumn. The inflationary impulse from the 2016 depreciation is fading and should partially reverse, while global food and energy prices are expected to stabilise. Base effects will become increasingly important.
• ? CPI inflation reached a five‐and‐a‐half‐year high of 3.1% in November, up from a little over 1% a year earlier. The 2017 pick‐up in inflation was the result of a perfect storm of a weaker pound, higher oil prices and sharp rises in domestic electricity bills. But inflation has subsequently slowed, reaching 2.5% in March. And, after a brief hiatus, we expect the downward trend to continue as we move through the year.
• ? The key driver of lower inflation will be weaker core pressures. In line with the literature, there is already evidence that the impact of sterling's depreciation is fading, and we think that the pressures could partially reverse if sterling continues to strengthen. We see little prospect of an offsetting escalation in domestic cost pressures. The recent pick‐up in wage growth has been muted and a further acceleration above 3% looks unlikely while there remains slack in the labour market.
• ? The food, petrol and energy categories contributed 0.8 ppt to CPI inflation last year, compared with a drag of 0.5 ppt in 2016, as stronger global pressures combined with the weaker pound. But as global prices have been more subdued of late, by the end of 2018, we expect these categories to be contributing 0.5 ppt to CPI inflation.
• ? The final element behind the expected slowdown in inflation is base effects. The comparison with last year's strong price pressures will depress the 2018 inflation rate, and we see the base effects being at their strongest mid‐year.
• ? We think it unlikely that such a slowdown in inflation would derail the MPC from hiking interest rates twice this year. But it could temper its hawkishness in 2019.

     

Economic Viewpoint: Does broad money matter?

Last October the Chancellor of the Exchequer suspended the target for the broad money supply (£M3). It was reinstated in this year's Budget with a range of 11 to 15 per cent. Its growth is currently exceeding even that apparently generous target. (On the terms of the original Medium-Term Financial Strategy in 1980, the growth should have been cut to 5 to 9 per cent by 1983–4.) Does this rapid growth of £M3 matter? Does it raise the threat of higher inflation some time in the future, or can the government now readily abandon £M3 completely and concentrate instead on some other measure of the money supply – or indeed abandon monetary targeting altogether? The relevance of £M 3 as an intermediate target depends on whether there is a stable demand for it. We report econometric evidence which suggests that there is a stable demand for £M3, which depends, among other things, on the rate of inflation. We believe that the unexpectedly rapid growth of the money supply since 1981 partly reflects an adjustment of desired money balances to lower inflation. But once this process of adjustment is complete, monetary growth must be brought to far lower levels. We conclude that the government should continue to use £M3 as an intermediate target, supported, as at present, by a narrow measure.     

Is Privately‐provided Electronic Money Next?

To survive, any new electronic money will need to provide some advantage to its users, such as lower transaction costs, increased privacy, a greater ability to avoid taxes, or a more stable value than its government-provided competitors. Any successful new money will have to overcome substantial barriers to entry, however. These barriers to entry occur primarily in the form of the costs of switching to a different means of payment and require an understanding of the role played by 'network economics.' Unless a substantial number of the individuals and businesses with whom a person trades use the same money, any new means of payment will have little value. A temptation facing government regulators will be to extend and expand regulations to apply to new means of payment and forms of money. A more productive role of governments is to attempt to protect their own money-creation franchises by minimising the advantages offered by privately-provided alternatives. Governments should enforce contracts and punish fraud while remaining vigilant with respect to inflation, keep tax rates low and protect the privacy of their citizens.     

A benefit/cost model to evaluate educational programs

Essentially, a benefit/cost model provides a procedure to evaluate a project in terms of its economic objectives. The analytic task is to determine the present value of all benefits less the present value of all costs, so that the projects which maximise this difference can be selected. There are private benefits (those appropriated by the persons directly involved in the project), and social benefits (those derived by others because of the project) that should also be taken into account when public policy is involved. Limitations of data preclude us from considering all the benefits, but in the present study of the benefits of an educational program, the following have been incorporated: (1) increases in earnings due to attaining higher levels of education; (2) benefits that accrue to the offspring of the present generation resulting from the influence of the educational attainment of parents on that of their children; and (3) the reduction in juvenile crime.

The model that is used to estimate these benefits includes thirteen separate equations. A major ingredient of all of these equations is represented by equation 4 in the model:

According to this equation, the private benefits of additional education are calculated as the difference between the expected economic returns with the program (designated T) and the expected economic returns without the program. Expected economic returns are estimated by the product of lifetime earnings for each level of education (V_i) times the probability distribution of obtaining the various levels of education (P_i), where i designates a level of education. These benefits will be different for individuals with different characteristics, designated ε.

The parameters of the model have been estimated by the use of Census data for earnings, and various special survey data for the probabilities of educational attainment and committing juvenile crimes. Essentially an educational program changes the probabilities of educational attainment, increasing the probability of graduating from high school and going on to college.

In this study, we applied the model to a Title I ESEA, program in San Francisco, California, during 1966–1967. Since the program was implemented in the elementary grades, we used the mathematics of Markov Chains to estimate the probabilities of eventual grade level attainment. We found that prior to the program, about half of the disadvantaged non-Negro males and considerably more than half of the Negro males could be expected to be dropouts. The model showed, however, that a Title I program in San Francisco costing $220 per child sufficiently raised test scores in elementary grades so that the expected dropout rates were reduced about 3 per cent for non-Negro and 2 per cent for Negro male pupils.     

Taxation, money, and credit, in a liberalizing socialist economy

Understanding the system of financial control in the pre-existing régime of classical socialism is a key to understanding what might go wrong in the transition. Accordingly, this paper proceeds in four steps by examining: