Evaluation of USDA Interval Forecasts of Corn and Soybean Prices

USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) price forecasts are published as an interval, but are typically analyzed as point estimates. Thus, all information about uncertainty imbedded in the forecast is ignored. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the accuracy of WASDE corn and soybean price forecasts using methodology suitable for testing judgmental interval forecasts. Accuracy tests suggest that WASDE forecasts are not calibrated at the 95% confidence level for both commodities and generally not calibrated for corn, but calibrated for soybeans, at the implied confidence level elicited from the survey of forecast providers.     

THE 1996 STERN STEWART PERFORMANCE 1000

The most striking aspect of the most recent Stern Stewart MVA rankings is the consistency of the top performers. But, if the identity of the top 10 companies shifted only slightly in 1995 (Exxon was the only newcomer to this group), there are a number of new EVA case studies in this year's set of company profiles: Monsanto; R. R. Donnelley, the Chicago-based printing company; Herman Miller, the well-known furniture manufacturer; SPX, a large manufacturer of specialty auto tools and parts; Allwater Environmental Services; and Vitro, S.A., the giant Mexican glass manufacturer. Also among the latest converts to EVA are the research staffs of a number of Wall Street investment banking houses such as First Boston and Goldman Sachs.     

Forecasting contemporal aggregates of multiple time series

The paper considers forecasting a contemporal linear aggregate y_t of a vector time series Z^'_t =(Z_1t,...,Z_kt). We first disciss the case where Z_t follows a stationary multiple moving average process and propose a measure of the efficiency of aggregation. A necessary and sufficient condition is given for the case of no gain by employing the component series. Extension of the results to stationary multiple autoregressive process and some non-stationarity processes is discussed, and an illustrative example is given.     

Adverse event-related costs for systemic metastatic breast cancer treatment among female Medicaid beneficiaries

Objective: This retrospective study compared the real-world incidence and costs of systemic treatment-related adverse events (AEs) in patients with metastatic breast cancer in a Medicaid population.

Methods: Insurance claims data for adult women who received biologic or chemotherapy (± hormonal therapy) for metastatic breast cancer between 2006–2013 were extracted from the Truven Health MarketScan^® Multi-State Medicaid database. Incidence of AEs (per 100 person years) and average monthly AE-related healthcare costs (per-patient-per-month) during each line of therapy (first or later lines) were estimated. The association between AEs and total all-cause healthcare costs was estimated using multivariable regression.

Results: A total of 729 metastatic breast cancer patients were analyzed. Hematological (202.3 per 100 person years) and constitutional AEs (289.6 per 100 person years) were the most common class of AEs reported. Unadjusted per-patient-per-month AE-related expenditure by class were highest for hematological AEs ($1524), followed by gastrointestinal ($839) and constitutional AEs ($795), with anemia ($942), nausea/vomiting ($699), and leukopenia/neutropenia ($550) having incurred the highest total AE-related costs. Adjusted total all-cause monthly costs increased with the number of AEs ($19,701 for >7 AEs, $16,264 for 4???6 AEs, and $13,731 for 1???3 AEs) compared to no AEs ($5908) (all p?Conclusions: Among metastatic breast cancer patients treated with systemic therapy in a Medicaid population, AEs were associated with significant increases in costs, which increased with the number of AEs experienced. Therapies associated with a lower incidence of AEs may reduce cost burden and improve patient outcomes.     

Conversion of ordinal attitudinal scales: An inferential Bayesian approach

The need for scale conversion may arise whenever an attitude of individuals is measured by independent entrepreneurs each using an ordinal scale of its own with possibly different numbers of (arbitrary) ordinal categories. Such situations are quite common in the marketing realm. The conversion of a score of an individual measured on one scale into an estimated score of a similar scale with a different range is the concern of this paper. An inferential Bayesian approach is adopted to analyze the situation where we believe the scale with fewer categories can be obtained by collapsing the finer scale. This leads to inferences concerning rules for the conversion of scales. Further, we propose a method for testing the validity of such a model. The use of the proposed methodology is exemplified on real data from surveys concerning performance evaluation and satisfaction.     

DEFINING THE GOVERNMENT'S DEBT AND DEFICIT

Although the budget deficit and the public debt feature prominently in political debate and economic research, there is no agreement about how they should be measured. They can be defined for different sets of public institutions, including the nested sets corresponding to central government, general government, and the public sector, and, for any definition of government, there are many measures of the debt and deficit, including those generated by four kinds of accounts (cash, financial, full accrual, and comprehensive), which can be derived from four nested sets of assets and liabilities. Each debt and deficit measure says something about public finances, but none tells the whole story. Each is also vulnerable to manipulation, and is likely to be manipulated if it is subject to a binding fiscal rule or target. Narrow definitions of government encourage the shifting of spending to entities outside the defined perimeter of government. Narrow definitions of debt and deficit encourage operations involving off‐balance‐sheets assets and liabilities, while broad measures are susceptible to the mismeasurement of on‐balance‐sheet assets and liabilities. Reviewing the literature on these issues, the paper concludes that governments should publish several measures of the debt and deficit in a form that clearly reveals their interrelationships.