Limits to forecasting in personalized medicine: An overview

Biomedical research is generating massive amounts of information about potential prognostic factors for health and disease. However, few prognostic factors or systems are robustly validated, and still fewer have made a convincing difference in health outcomes or in prolonging life expectancy. For most diseases and outcomes, a considerable component of the prognostic variance remains unknown, and may remain so for the foreseeable future. I discuss here some of the main problems in medical forecasting that pose obstacles to personalized medicine. Their recognition may help identify solutions to improve personalized prognosis, or at least understand and cope with the component of the future that we cannot predict. Much prognostic research is stuck at generating “publishable units”, without any interest in conclusively proving their worth, let alone moving them into real life applications. Information is reported selectively and reporting is deficient. The replication record of prognostic claims is poor. Even among replicated prognostic effects, few are convincingly shown to add much information besides what is already known through more simple, traditional measurements. There are few efforts to systematize prognostic knowledge. Most prognostic effects are subtle when traced to the molecular level, where most current research operates. Many researchers, clinicians, and the public are not appropriately educated to interpret prognostic information. We still have not even agreed on what the important health outcomes are that we want to predict and intervene for, and some subjectivity may be unavoidable. Finally, without concomitant effective, affordable, and non-harmful interventions, prognosis alone is of questionable value, and wrong prognosis or a wrong interpretation thereof can be harmful. The identification of these problems also suggests a roadmap on what could be done to amend them. Solutions include a systematic approach to the design, conduct, reporting, replication, and clinical translation of prognostic research; as well as the education of researchers, clinicians, and the general public. Finally, we need to recognize that perfect individualized health forecasting is not a realistic target in the foreseeable future, and we have to live with considerable residual uncertainty.     

Prolific authors and institutions in leading international business journals

The science and practice of international business is advanced through scholarly contribution to the leading international business journals. Increased competition among academic institutions has led to increased emphasis on publication in the leading international business journals. Yet, little is known as to the answers to questions such as: (1) Who are the most prolific authors in the leading international business journals? and (2) Which educational institutions appear poised to lead international business scholarship? To examine these questions, the study examines scholarly work in international business over the past eleven years in six leading international business journals (i.e., Journal of International Business Studies, Management International Review, Journal of World Business, International Marketing Review, Journal of International Marketing, and International Business Review). Addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the authors and institutions most likely to influence the field of international business.     

The geography of trade in goods and asset holdings

Gravity models have been widely used to describe bilateral trade in goods. Portes and Rey [Portes, R., Rey, H., 2005. The Determinants of Cross-Border Equity Flows. Journal of International Economics, 65(2), 269-296.] applied this framework to cross-border equity flows and found that distance, which proxies information asymmetries, is a surprisingly very large barrier to cross-border asset trade. We adopt a different point of view and explore the complementarity between bilateral trade in goods and bilateral asset holdings in a simultaneous gravity equations framework. Providing different instruments for both endogenous variables, we show that a 10% increase in bilateral trade raises bilateral asset holdings by 6% to 7%. The reverse causality is also significant, albeit smaller. Controlling for trade, the impact of distance on asset holdings is drastically reduced.     

Granger因果关系检验应用中的若干问题

分析了实践中应用Granger因果关系检验存在的一些问题,如信息遗漏,变量变换改变因果关系的性质、变量单整性对检验程序的影响以及检验模型的选择等,并提出在线性投影上有初步证据的因果概念。进而,应用单整变量之间Granger因果关系的一般检验程序对1978~2013年我国货币供给量与价格水平、产出之间的Granger因果性重新进行检验。     

Interactive data and retail investor decision‐making: an experimental study

The results of an experimental study of retail investors' use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language tagged (interactive) data and PDF format for making investment decisions are reported. The main finding is that data format made no difference to participants' ability to locate and integrate information from statement footnotes to improve investment decisions. Interactive data were perceived by participants as quick and ‘accurate’, but it failed to facilitate the identification of the adjustment needed to make the ratios accurate for comparison. An important implication is that regulators and software designers should work to reduce user reliance on the comparability of ratios generated automatically using interactive data.     

中国新疆与周边区域矿业经济合作辩析

本文通过对新疆矿业经济与周边国家和地区进行国际合作的分析,将俄罗斯、中亚选为合作目标区,并提出了利用"两个资源"、"两个市场"的战略构想,探讨新疆矿业经济步入国际合作轨道的途径。     

对外开放程度度量方法的研究综述

从贸易方面度量开放程度的指标有外贸依存度、关税率、有效保护率和数量限制平均覆盖率、非关税壁垒覆盖率、价格扭曲度等。从金融角度来研究开放的指标有外汇黑市溢价、本国对外投资和吸收外资的流量、存量、增长率以及它们占GDP的比重等。有些学者运用计量方法测算选定指标的理论预测值,通过比较实际值与理论预测值的差异来度量开放程度。国内学者一般选择3至6个分指标的加权平均值来度量我国经济的对外开放程度。     

The Role of the Global Reporting Initiative's Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in the Social Screening of Investments

Social screening of investments calls not only for investment policy and criteria, but also for information about companies, their policies, practices and performance. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and its June 2000 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines have the potential to significantly improve the usefulness and quality of information reported by companies about their environmental, social and economic impacts and performance. The GRI aims to develop a voluntary reporting framework that will elevate sustainability reporting practices to a level equivalent to that of financial reporting in rigour, comparability, auditability and general acceptance. This will be a welcome and efficient supplement to the questionnaires, interviews, press releases, media reports and other sources of information traditionally used for screening in investment decision making – social/ethical and mainstream. The Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index, the Jantzi Social Index and the Innovest EcoValue'21 analytical platform, together with the SRI community, are all likely to benefit from GRI-style sustainability reports. One of the GRI's key challenges is to accommodate the broad variety of disclosure needs and expectations of a wide range of report users and company stakeholders. To maximize the usefulness of the GRI Guidelines, report users, including the SRI community, need to be engaged in the process of developing and refining the Guidelines over time. The GRI Guidelines are emerging as an important instrument in enabling companies to communicate with their stakeholders about performance and accountability beyond just the financial bottom line.     

Specialization dynamics

This paper proposes a new empirical framework for analyzing specialization dynamics. A country’s pattern of specialization is viewed as a distribution across sectors, and statistical techniques for analyzing the evolution of this entire distribution are employed. The empirical framework is implemented using data on 20 industries in seven OECD countries since 1970. We find substantial mobility in patterns of specialization. Over time horizons of 5 years, this is largely explained by forces common across countries, including world prices and common changes in technical efficiency. Over longer time horizons, country-specific changes in factor endowments become more important. There is no evidence of an increase in countries’ overall degree of specialization.     

生物技术创新对世界农产品贸易的影响及我国的对策研究

本文分析了世界各主要国家在生物技术管理方面的政策差异及其原因,分析了生物技术创新对世界农产品贸易的各种潜在和现实的影响,并对未来转基因农产品贸易的形势进行了初步的预测和判断。在此基础上,从短期和长期两个方面提出了今后我国生物技术发展和转基因农产品贸易的政策建议。