The new middle class in emerging markets: How values and demographics influence discretionary consumption

The rise of new middle‐class consumers in rapidly transforming emerging markets has attracted the attention of Western business executives. What they know about this growing segment of customers will determine whether they succeed or fail in these markets. The present study examines the factors that drive the discretionary consumption of this new middle class, including the effects of consumerist values, religious values, occupation, education levels, and ownership of fixed assets. The study draws its insights from data gathered from 391 new middle‐class consumers in Ankara, the second‐largest city in Turkey. The findings provide important implications for businesses, both indigenous and foreign. An overall implication is that managers ought to understand and qualify the new middle class in emerging markets not simply by their access to disposable income but by deeper attitudinal and behavioral characteristics.     

Identifying cycling-inducing neighborhoods: A latent class approach

Understanding how spatial attributes of cities and neighborhoods induce cycling is relevant for urban planning and policy making. In this work, ordered logit and latent class models are specified and estimated to analyze how the built environment affects bicycle-commuting frequency. Data come from a survey to 1,487 people in the city of Santiago, Chile, including sociodemographic information, travel behavior patterns and place of residence and work. Using geographic information systems tools, the built environment was characterized with variables calculated for a 500-m-radius buffer around the residential and work locations of each individual. Two models are estimated, first an ordered logit model confirms that built environment variables effect on cycling is similar to what has been reported in the literature, with some new findings such as an increase in cycling when public transport accessibility is low and the role of built environment attributes at the destination. Second, a latent class ordered logit is used to identify two classes of neighborhood in term of their cycling patterns, as a function of their density, presence of cycling infrastructure and distance to the main activity center of the city. This result allows to map the class membership probabilities, potentially helping to identify neighborhoods that encourage cycling and providing relevant information for policy making and infrastructure decisions.     

A machine-learning method for improving crash injury severity analysis: a case study of work zone crashes in Cairo,Egypt

Abstract

The quality of vehicular collision data is crucial for studying the relationship between injury severity and collision factors. Misclassified injury severity data in the crash dataset, however, may cause inaccurate parameter estimates and consequently lead to biased conclusions and poorly designed countermeasures. This is particularly true for imbalanced data where the number of samples in one class far outnumber the other. To improve the classification performance of the injury severity, the paper presents a robust noise filtering technique to deal with the mislabels in the imbalanced crash dataset using the advanced machine learning algorithms. We examine the state-of-the-art filtering algorithms, including Iterative Noise Filtering based on the Fusion of Classifiers (INFFC), Iterative Partitioning Filter (IPF), and Saturation Filter (SatF). In the case study of Cairo (Egypt), the empirical results show that: (1) the mislabels in crash data significantly influence the injury severity predictions, and (2) the proposed M-IPF filter outperforms its counterparts in terms of the effectiveness and efficiency in eliminating the mislabels in crash data. The test results demonstrate the efficacy of the M-IPF in handling the data noise and mitigating the impacts thereof.     

谈英语课堂中的非言语交际

非言语交际是交际行为的一个重要组成部分。在英语课堂教学中,教师可以恰当地运用非言语交际来提高学生的学习积极性,加强师生的交流,从而达到良好的教学效果。     

《德意志意识形态》中的法本质思想及当代价值

《德意志意识形态》是马克思历史唯物主义法学形成的标志。《德意志意识形态》阐述了一系列的历史唯物主义法学理论,其中包含了法本质的思想。马克思主义法本质观认为,社会物质生活条件是法的基础,法是表现统治阶级共同利益的国家意志。在当代中国,虽然社会历史条件发生了一些变化,但马克思主义法本质观仍然具有普适性,因此应当坚持以马克思主义法本质观来考察社会主义法的本质,促进中国特色社会主义法律体系的构建和完善。     

The Long‐Run History of Income Inequality in Denmark

We use historical publications and micro data from tax returns to construct internationally comparable estimates of the development in income inequality in Denmark over the last 140 years. The study shows that income inequality and top income shares have declined during several distinct phases in between periods of stability. Furthermore, the quality of the Danish data allows us to analyse not only the development in top income shares but also broader inequality measures such as the Gini coefficient. These analyses show that top income shares are a good proxy for the underlying development in inequality.     

高等教育能打破社会阶层固化吗?--基于有序probit半参数估计及夏普里值分解的实证分析

文章基于2013年中国综合社会调查(CGSS2013)数据,首先运用有序probit 模型的半参数估计方法检验高等教育对社会阶层的影响,其次采用最新发展的基于 R2的夏普里值方法测度高等教育对社会分层形成的贡献率,并从区域视角管窥经济发展和市场化转型条件下高等教育受影响的演进趋势。结果显示：(1)接受过高等教育的居民,确实拥有更高的社会阶层评估。但若剔除家庭背景带来的接受高等教育机会的差距,高等教育促进社会阶层流动的能力明显弱化。基于R2的夏普里值分解表明,高等教育变量的贡献率不到10%,撇去高等教育的代际传递效应后,净效应更低。(2)东部地区有微弱的证据显示高等教育带来的社会阶层提升效应正在展现。无论是从总贡献率还是分解后的直接贡献率看,东部地区的百分比贡献都要高于中西部地区。这说明随着经济发展和市场化改革的推进,高等教育改善社会分层的效果有可能会强化。(3)影响社会分层差异最重要的因素为家庭过去的社会阶层,即社会阶层分布存在明显的代际传递现象。另外,个体特征及经济特征也是影响社会分层的重要因素。文章研究显示,要进一步推进开放型社会阶层的形成,需要在构建市场化导向能力本位的新型社会流动体系制度框架下,确立更为公平的高等教育竞争机制及补偿机制。     

Mobility of Top Incomes in Germany

I analyze German top income mobility using micro‐level panel data of personal income tax returns which are highly representative for top income taxpayers for the years 2001–06. Top income mobility is assessed in three dimensions: (i) persistence in top income fractiles and its stability over time, (ii) measures of individual mobility that are not dependent on the fractile size: the degree of mobility between equally sized groups and mobility in ranks, and (iii) mobility's impact on top income shares. Persistence in top income fractiles is comparatively high and fairly stable across the analyzed period. Top income recipients are less prone to downward mobility and see less variation in annual ranks than less rich tax units. Mobility's impact on income concentration is moderate. The top percentile's share is reduced by roughly 5 percent over six years.     

大学英语教学中的课堂教学交往

本文指出教学交往在大学英语课堂教学中尤其重要的意义,列举了大学英语课教学交往的主要模式,仔细分析了它们的利弊,并提出了组织有效的英语课堂教学交往的必要条件。