Challenging The Spirit Level: Is There Really a Relationship between Inequality and Obesity?

This paper examines the proposition, set out in The Spirit Level, that inequality is associated with high levels of obesity. It reviews existing literature and uses British Household Panel Survey data to study how district‐level and regional‐level income inequality is related to obesity in the UK. This is likely to be the first study of its type that uses individual‐level data that is representative of the UK population. We find little evidence to support policies that reduce income inequality with the aim of reducing obesity levels in the UK.     

保险合同解释方法研究

保险合同是保险人致力于合同订立和履行上的一致性,为自己易于计算、节约成本而创造出来的格式化合同。该合同使得保险人对其所承担的风险、责任、险种等等一目了然,有其存在的必要性。但是,导致了当事人双方谈判地位不平等,个别交涉成本过高,契约正义被隐藏等问题。因此,司法裁判成为声张契约正义以及维护当事人合法权益的迂回模式之一。然而,在审理案件中,对合同的进一步阐释、对双方当事人真实意思表示的探求以及对合同争议焦点的解决,都起着至关重要的作用。这就涉及到如何适用多种解释方式对该合同进行解释。     

Trends in Total and Subgroup Income Inequality in the Singaporean Workforce

This paper examines the trends in income inequality in Singapore using Labour Force Survey data from 1974 to 1998. Trends in inequality within and between age, educational and occupational groups are studied using the Theil inequality index. A new method based on the Gini coefficient is also utilized to explore the nature of inter-temporal variation in within-group inequality. Any increase within age-group inequality is due to changing income shares, while the decrease in educational-group inequality comes from decreases in within-group inequality. The contribution of intereducation inequality has also increased over the years, as has inter-occupational inequality.     

Symposium onMarket development and inequality in China1

After three decades of market development, the problem in China is no longer how to achieve growth but how to manage its consequences and how to sustain it. One of the most important consequences is the growing inequality – between skilled and unskilled workers, between the genders, between rural and urban areas, and between inland and coastal regions. The papers in this symposium shed light on the important issue of inequality during rapid market development in China. Analysis based on ground level empirical studies can help us to understand better the sources of the rising inequality and to illuminate the nature of the future challenges.     

阿贝尔（Abel）方程的一个特殊解法

给出奇异积分方程阿贝尔方程的一种技巧解法，作累次积分及变量替换推出此方程的解式，提出一个注记，拓展了求解积分方程的思路。变量替换、积分变换是求解微分方程和积分方程的一种重要方法。     

Asymptotically optimal estimation of smooth functionals for interval censoring, part 2

Estimation in the interval censoring model is considered. A class of smooth functionals is introduced, of which the mean is an example. We consider case 2, with two observation times for each unobservable event time, in the situation that the observation times cannot become arbitrarily close to each other. It is proved that the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of the functional asymptotically reaches the information lower bound.     

Fuzzy measurement of income inequality: Some possibility results on the fuzzification of the lorenz ordering

Summary This paper starts from the premise that the concept of income inequality is ill-defined, and hence, it studies the measurement of income inequality from a fuzzy set theoretical point of view. It is argued that the standard (fuzzy) transitivity concepts are not compatible with fuzzy inequality orderings which respect Lorenz ordering. For instance, we show that there does not exist a max-min transitive fuzzy relation on a given income distribution space which ranks distributions unambiguously according to the Lorenz criterion whenever they can actually be ranked by it. Weakening the imposed transitivity concept, it is possible to escape from the noted impossibility theorems. We introduce some alternative transitivity concepts for fuzzy relations, and subsequently, construct a class of fuzzy orderings which preserve Lorenz ordering and satisfy these alternative transitivities. It is also shown that fuzzy measurement can be used to construct confidence intervals for the crisp conclusions of inequality indices.I wish to thank Ashish Banerjee, Kaushik Basu, Larry Blume, Gary Fields, Semih Koray, Tapan Mitra, Antony Shorrocks, Sinan Unur and two anonymous referees of this journal for insighthul comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to the participants of the 1993 Midwest Mathematical Economics Conference held in University of Wisconsin at Madison and the 2nd International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare held in University of Rochester.