Computer‐Aided Statistical Instruction—Multi‐Mediocre Techno‐Trash?

The very soul of statistics are data, but few students actually collect data as part of their statistical journey. The impediments to real data collection exercises are very real—they are logistically difficult to set up, expensive, and may not work because of extraneous events outside the control of the instructor. Computer‐aided laboratories are a way to bring many of the benefits of actual data collection to students at a fraction of the cost and can be easily controlled by the instructor. There are many computer‐aided modules available—indeed a search on Google gave over 1 million hits. Some modules are good but many are mediocre. What separates the gems from the trash?     

THE MICRO‐DYNAMICS OF CATCH‐UP IN INDONESIAN PAPER MANUFACTURING

In this study we analyze the micro‐dynamics of catch‐up in Indonesian paper manufacturing, using a two‐country plant‐level dataset for the period 1975–97. We apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure to what extent Indonesian paper mills are catching up with Finnish mills in terms of technical efficiency. Three questions are addressed: What is the distribution of Indonesian plant technical efficiency vis‐à‐vis the technological frontier? What is the role of entry, exit, and survival in Indonesia for catch‐up in the paper industry as a whole? In what ways do catching‐up plants in Indonesia differ from non‐catching‐up plants? We find that on average the Indonesian paper industry moved closer to the technological frontier during the 1990s. However, catch‐up has been a highly localized process in which only a few large establishments have achieved near best‐practice performance, while most other plants have stayed behind.     

The Millennium Development Goals, How Realistic Are They?

Summary In its Millennium Declaration of September 2000, the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be reached in 2015 through concerted efforts worldwide. According to UN-calculations, the estimated costs in terms of additional development aid of meeting the MDGs in all countries vary from 121 billion US dollars in 2006 to 189 billion US dollars in 2015. The present communication reviews the figures reported. It appears that while Asia is well on track to achieve the goals, essentially through efforts of its own, Africa is lagging behind, albeit that according to detailed survey data on weight-for-length among adults collected in Africa for the US aid agency, rates of undernutrition are about 58 percent of the levels used as a reference by the UN, which are based on assessment of food production. Yet, child undernutrition comes out higher in these surveys. Besides mentioning reservations about the adequacy of these MDG-yardsticks, we consider the cost estimates for Africa as presented in the UN-reports and subsequently assessed in the literature. It appears that these estimates are too low, even if all MDG-funds were concentrated on this continent, essentially because they are set up as shopping lists that are necessarily incomplete and, among others, disregard many of the indirect cost of delivering the goods to the target beneficiaries, including the cost of providing adequate security and avoiding corruption. Nonetheless, recalling how hopeless the situation looked some 30 years ago for China, India, and Bangladesh, where unprecedented numbers have now escaped extreme poverty during the past decade and a half, we submit that over a time horizon of about twice the 15 years of the MDG’s and with adequate international support, realization of the MDG-targets should be possible for Africa too. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Evaluations using nonparametric statistics

In this paper the resilience of nonparametric statistics to an extension of the sample set is investigated. It is shown that the addition of fourth and fifth samples does influence one's decision about a difference in scores between the original samples. This could result in strange recommendations like: The experiment pointed out that no significant differences were found between the experimental and control group. However, we recommend you to repeat the experiment, because the differences over two experimental and two control groups with exactly identical results will probably be significant. The cause of the problem mentioned is sought in the ranking of scores and the statistics used. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations.     

Historicizing the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship: The case of the ethnic Chinese in Bangkok

This paper aims to come to a better understanding of the meaning of ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship for second- and third-generation ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Bangkok, Thailand. Research on ethnic Chinese entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia typically investigates the dominance, attributed to specific ‘Chinese’ cultural values and strong intra-ethnic networks, of the ethnic Chinese in business and entrepreneurship. Our research among second- and third-generations shows an inclination of the interviewees to emphasize the irrelevance of their ‘ethnic’ Chinese background in entrepreneurship. To understand the meanings of the expressed irrelevance, we argue that it is constructive to incorporate a historical/generational approach of the ethnic group (migration history, nationalism) and of the business (social organization) into the study of ethnic entrepreneurship. The contribution to ethnic entrepreneurship research is threefold. Firstly, we show how a generational lens provides a more nuanced understanding of the ‘ethnic’ in ethnic entrepreneurship. Secondly, we show how incorporating the historical context helps to position business conduct in the social/societal experiences of entrepreneurs. Finally, our case study of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand brings an Asian perspective to ethnic entrepreneurship debates that generally concern European and North American research studies and thus hopes to inspire future comparative research.     

Competition leverage: how the demand side affects optimal risk adjustment

We study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high‐risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low‐risk consumers. Insurers then have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly corrects for cost differences. To achieve first best, risk adjustment should overcompensate insurers for serving high‐risk agents. Second, we identify a trade‐off between efficiency and consumer welfare. Reducing the difference in risk adjustment subsidies increases consumer welfare by leveraging competition from the elastic low‐risk market to the less elastic high‐risk market. Third, mandatory pooling can increase consumer surplus further, at the cost of efficiency.     

Global sourcing of complex production processes

We develop a theory of a firm in an incomplete contracts environment which decides on the complexity, the organization, and the global scale of its production process. Specifically, the firm decides i) how many intermediate inputs are simultaneously combined to a final product, ii) if the supplier of each input is an external contractor or an integrated affiliate, and iii) if that input is offshored to a foreign country. Our model leads to a rich set of predictions on the internal structure of multinational firms. In particular, it provides an explanation why many firms choose hybrid sourcing and have both outsourced and integrated suppliers.