OECD unbundled local loop pricing

This study examines OECD fully unbundled and line sharing monthly wholesale prices for 2002–2008. The results are informative with economic analysis appearing to inform regulator decision making. However, with the cost proxy (viz., copper-wage relative price, population density, urbanisation and business line penetration), regulator costing methods (long run incremental and fully allocated cost), and time trend arguments only explaining approximately 40% of the price variation there remains ample unexplained variation, and political and institutional variables may help reduce this. Finally, both price series are subject to increasingly rapid value declines, although the patterns are somewhat distinct. This suggests that initial prices are truly transitory.     

Child injury prevention in Vietnam: achievements and challenges

As with other South Asian countries, injury is becoming a leading cause of death and morbidity among children in Vietnam. In response to the increasing burden of child injury, government and non-government agencies in Vietnam have combined efforts during the last decade to develop and implement various child injury prevention strategies and programmes. This article provides, through a review of relevant documents and interviews with major stakeholders, an overview of these efforts and highlights major challenges to child injury prevention in the country. The findings point to notable achievements in terms of increasing awareness of injury facing children at all levels in the community and developing a sound injury prevention policy framework in a relatively short period of time. However, much needs to be done to implement necessary environmental and legislative changes, strengthen child injury surveillance and injury prevention research; and to improve access to health services. The insight into the experience of Vietnam could benefit other low- and middle-income countries with a high burden of child injury.     

Poverty and Inequality Maps in Rural Vietnam: An Application of Small Area Estimation

The objective of the present paper is to estimate poverty and inequality for rural Vietnam at different levels of aggregation by combining the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey from 2006 and the Rural Agriculture and Fishery Census from the same year. Using the small area estimation method, estimates at the regional, provincial and district level are produced, and both expenditure and income based measures are considered. It is found that all provinces across the country have experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during the period 1999–2006. Some of the largest reductions in poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close to the national average. The poorest provinces are experiencing reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest pace. Provinces and districts with a larger poverty reduction in the period 1999–2006 tended to have a lower level of inequality in 2006. Results based on expenditure poverty estimates are found to be very similar to those based on income poverty estimates.     

The quality of consumption: Some Australian evidence

The paper reports new estimates of Theil's index of the quality of consumption for four age groups and at two levels of affluence (income) for Australian households over the period 1975.IV to 1982.IV with special emphasis on the role played by energy and non-energy commodity groups. The evidence reveals an improvement in the quality of consumption of energy and energy-related goods and a quality deterioration in food, clothing and rent at all income levels and for all four age groups.     

Axiomatic characterizations of the Choquet integral

Summary. The Choquet integral is an integral part of recent advances in decision theory involving non-additive measures. In this article we present two new axiomatic characterizations of this functional. Received: January 27, 1997; revised version: April 28, 1997     

Threshold effects in panel data stochastic frontier models of dairy production in Canada

One of the most enduring problems in econometrics is how to properly account for heterogeneity among firms. Threshold regression models are intuitively appealing methods to deal with this issue. We consider a fixed-effect panel data stochastic frontier model (Schmidt and Sickles, 1984; Martin-Marcos and Suarez-Galvez, 2000) and, relying on Hansen (1999, 2000a), we propose an estimator that accommodates multiple thresholds. Our model assumes absence of any unmeasured time invariant heterogeneity across firms as in Greene (2005, p. 277). Slope and threshold parameters can be estimated using a within estimator combined with a grid search over the threshold parameters. Testing for threshold effects is problematic because threshold parameters are not identified under the null hypothesis, a case of the so-called Davies' problem. We apply the bootstrap procedure proposed by Hansen (1999, 2000a) to test for the presence of thresholds. An asymptotic confidence set for the threshold parameter can be obtained by inverting an LR test, using the distribution result presented in Hansen (1999, 2000a). Our empirical application features a panel of Quebec dairy farms. We use farm size as the threshold variable. The presence of a trend in the specification matters for the determination of the number of thresholds. Technical efficiency scores and rankings of farms estimated from competing model specifications are highly correlated and do not vary significantly across groups of farm sizes defined by the threshold parameter values.     

The role of the IMF and the World Bank in the former Eastern Bloc countries

Although the main responsibility for carrying out economic reforms in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe lies with these countries themselves, the transformation of the Soviet-style economic system into a market economy must be made easier by support from abroad. In this the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will play an important part.     

The Cochrane-Orcutt procedure numerical examples of multiple admissible minima

We present two numerical examples of multiple admissible minima obtained by using the Cochrane-Orcutt iterative technique: a forgotten and somewhat farfetched example, constructed by Hildreth and Lu, and a new example, based on more typical economic data.