Hedonic price indexes and the distribution of buyers across the product space: an application to mainframe computers

In this article we present the Silverman multimodality test and mixture distributions methodology, applying both approaches to the Survey of Economic Expectations of the Central Bank of Chile. The main results reflect the importance of a permanent monitoring of the complete distributions and not just central tendency meausures as is the practice in many central banks currently. We find that the forecasts of the private professional forecasters have systematically been in line with the inflation targeting range, although during episodes where the effective inflation proved to be outside the target range.     

金融消费者教育调查实证研究--以云南省为例

本文通过对云南省16个地州市城镇金融消费者的问卷抽样调查发现,全省金融消费者素质存在明显的个体差异;采用因子分析法得出金融认知能力、金融消费偏好和市场环境感知能力是影响云南金融消费者素质的主要因素,据此提出了构建云南省金融消费者教育体系的系统策略。     

A Survey of Economic Understanding in U.S. High Schools

The recent widespread adoption of online competitions in economic education provides a unique opportunity to make frequent assessments of economic literacy in U.S. classrooms. In this survey, student responses to test items from the Test of Economic Literacy (TEL) are used to create economic concept and content area achievement benchmarks. These benchmarks provide an interim renorming of the TEL and allow the authors to gauge the status of economic understanding among high school students. The data also allow the authors to compare learning outcomes between regular and advanced economics classes. Finally, the authors find that students in advanced economics classes significantly outperform students in regular classes.     

An assessment of the contribution of consumer confidence towards household spending decisions using UK data

The European Commission’s consumer confidence indicator (CCI) is assembled from responses to four questions about individual and general economic prospects which form part of the EU’s Consumer Survey. However, concerns may be raised about whether the four components should be constrained to exerting the same influence in a forecasting model of household consumption. Also, in this context, it would seem to be appropriate to permit a role to other information that is obtained from the EU survey. Consequently, in this article, different regression functions are specified in order to assess whether there is any gain to be achieved in predictive accuracy from adopting a more flexible approach towards using the data from the EU questionnaire. With an emphasis upon parsimony, an econometric analysis is performed in conjunction with UK quarterly data on household consumption expenditure. For two categories of spending, it is discovered that the quality of forecasts benefits from having undertaken disaggregation involving survey data beyond those which contribute towards the calculation of the CCI. Indeed, the respective consumption variables (relating to non-durable goods and durable goods excluding vehicles) are seen to be associated with relatively volatile behaviour over the forecast interval, 2008–2013.     

Consumer Boycotts: Does Trust in Law-Making and Law-Enforcing Institutions Matter?

This article estimates the effects of trust in political and judicial institutions on individuals’ propensity to take part in consumer boycotts. In particular, this study disentangles the effects of institutional trust and quality. The analysis relies on data from the 2010 European Social Survey, which is a path breaking comparative study of how justice is perceived and allows a valid measure of judicial and political trust to be constructed. A two-step instrumental variable method was used to measure the effects of institutional trust, controlling for micro- and macro- level factors. The results indicate that trust in law-making institutions is negatively associated with boycott participation, whereas the relationship between judicial trust in institutions and an individual’s likelihood to boycott is U-shaped. The findings are robust to the introduction of social capital and sociodemographic variables.     

Inter-firm networks and innovation: a survey of literature

This survey covers the recent literature on inter-firm networks as far as they have implications for innovation and technological change. The studies are classified according to the direction of causality in network studies. In the literature, some studies focus on the effect of networks, while others on the origins and formation of networks. These are represented as a circular flow diagram of network research. Circular diagram includes three themes of analysis as: (1) origins of networks, (2) firm performance, (3) network structure, and shows the relationship between these themes as observed in network research. The aim of this survey is to guide researchers working on inter-firm networks about the theoretical and empirical results obtained up to now in the field and to highlight those areas which need further work.     

浅析煤炭地勘企业项目投资基准收益率

从地勘企业项目投资基准收益率的重要性出发,通过对其定义的剖析,分析了影响地勘企业基准收益率的诸多因素,并由此确定其计算模型,最后结合实际工作中的具体情况,对地勘企业基准收益率的理论值进行修正,为地勘企业的投资决策提供理论基础。     

关于国有东风农场党员思想状况的调查与思考

为了改进国有企业党组织党建工作,文章针对广西农垦国有东风农场党员思想状况开展调查研究,并对加强农场党员队伍建设进行思考。     

CORS技术在数字测图中的应用

1:500大比例尺地形图是数字城市建设中基础地理数据库的重要组成部分。本文以西固区西面马耳山为例,研究探讨了网络RTK技术在数字化测图技术中的具体应用,详细介绍了数字成图的过程,分析了测量的精度情况,阐述了CORS技术在该项目中的优越性,值得类似作业借鉴使用。     

Order Effects in Batteries of Questions

Batteries of questions with identical response items are commonly used in survey research. This paper suggests that question order has the potential to cause systematic positive or negative bias on responses to all questions in a battery. Whilst question order effects have been studied for many decades, almost no attention has been given to this topic. The primary aim is to draw attention to this effect, to demonstrate its possible magnitude, and to discuss a range of mechanisms through which it might occur. These include satisficing, anchoring and cooperativeness. The effect seems apparent in the results of a recent survey. This was a survey of Emergency Department patients presenting to Wollongong Hospital (Australia) with apparently less urgent conditions in 2004. Two samples were taken. Question order was fixed in the first sample (n = 104; response rate RR2 = 94%), but randomised in the second sample (n = 46; response rate RR2 = 96%). Respondents were asked to indicate whether each of 18 reasons for presenting to the ED was a ‘very important reason’ a ‘moderately important reason’ or ‘not a reason’ The mean number of very important reasons selected was 56% higher in the first sample as compared to the second sample.