An innovation to improve health outcomes in Amajuba district,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Systems’ thinking places high value on understanding the context. This study focused on the collection of disaggregated data in order to understand the context, to facilitate improvement of health outcomes. The aim of this article was to assess the implementation of municipal ward-based health data collection (disaggregated data) and health care workers’ perceptions of this data collection process. This cross-sectional study used mixed methods in Amajuba district. The participants were professional nurses at the Primary Health Care level. Of the 131 respondents, 123 (93.9%) collected municipal ward-based health data, and found it useful. Opportunities for improving data collection were identified. Disaggregation of the data at ward level contributes to a better understanding of the target population’s health, assists planning for health needs and enables provision of targeted interventions in order to improve health outcomes, to prevent financial regression and waste of health resources.     

Covariance breakdowns and connectedness of crude oil futures markets with non-synchronous data

ABSTRACT

This article identifies the breakdowns in the covariance of three benchmark crude oil futures markets (WTI, Brent and Dubai) and investigates the changes of market connectedness across the breakdown periods. As the crude oil futures are traded in different regions, this article eliminates the non-synchronous trading data by employing the Vector Moving Average structure and the Bayesian data augmentation approach, which keeps the integrity of original data without changing its properties. The results show that there are significant breaks in the covariance structure of crude oil futures markets. The breakdown periods are consistent with the periods when the market volatilities are at high level and the returns are volatile. The changes of market connectedness are independent of the covariance states, which supports the globalization hypothesis for the crude oil market. The results also suggest that there is more information flow out of the WTI than to the WTI during the sample period, particularly during the breakdown periods in 2008–2009.     

In Data We Trust? An Analysis of Indonesian Socioeconomic Survey Data

What if a popular dataset that has generated a large amount of literature has been misunderstood and has led to misleading inferences? This paper examines household expenditure data from the Indonesian National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas), which started more than 50 years ago. Appropriate use of Susenas data for policy analysis requires an understanding that the survey’s expenditure variable does not measure true out-of-pocket expenses, because it includes subsidies received by households when obtaining goods and services. We also highlight an abrupt change in the survey instrument that occurred in 2015, when the reference period for certain items was extended. For health items, this generated a change in the expenditure series that can be misinterpreted as being the result of a social health insurance reform introduced in 2014 to lower the health care burden on households. Accordingly, we propose a way to account for this artificial expenditure movement in Susenas.     

小学生体型特征及其随年龄变化规律

该文对嘉兴市6个年级共600个小学生的人体测量数据，进行了统计分析，探讨了男女小学生体型随年龄变化的规律。     

Determinants of Current Account Imbalances in 16 OECD Countries: An Out-Of-Sample Perspective

We employ panel data as well as country-specific models to uncover empirically the determinants of current account imbalances. We find evidence of slope heterogeneity likely rendering the fixed-effect estimator inconsistent. Mean group estimation is followed to overcome the latter difficulty. Both estimation techniques are evaluated by means of in- and out-of-sample criteria. The mean group estimator outperforms the fixed-effect approach and, moreover, only three economic variables are found to impact on the current account balance significantly. These are the government budget balance, the domestic output gap and the changes of the terms of trade. We finally propose a parsimonious dynamic model of the current account, including only these variables and illustrate that it has similar predictive accuracy as country-specific benchmark models. JEL no. F32, C23, C53     

Software for Learning and for Doing Statistics

The community of statisticians and statistics educators should take responsibility for the evaluation and improvement of software quality from the perspective of education. The paper will develop a perspective, an ideal system of requirements to critically evaluate existing software and to produce future software more adequate both for learning and doing statistics in introductory courses. Different kinds of tools and microworlds are needed. After discussing general requirements for such programs, a prototypical ideal software system will be presented in detail. It will be illustrated how such a system could be used to construct learning environments and to support elementary data analysis with exploratory working style.     

基于引制一体化的定向战斗部起爆控制研究

采用定向战斗部已成为防空导弹增强战斗部杀伤威力的重要发展方向，但是定向战斗部的应用对起爆控制系统提出了新的要求。本文提出一种利用防空导弹无线电引信与导引头一体化设计（简称引制一体化设计），并应用数据融合实现定向战斗部起爆控制的技术途径。     

会计数据信度与效度的特征性描述——基于会计变量及变量间关系的认识

无形会计数据信度即度量结果的重复性程度,是反映会计数据的客观性指标。效度是判断度量结果即研究对象结果的有效性程度。会计数据的信度与效度的探讨有助于会计信息质量的改善与质量标准的制定,对于进一步展开会计科学的研究也具有一定的意义。本文通过分析会计数据信度与效度的特征性,探讨与验证会计数据信度与效度路径研究方法。     

Efficiency outcomes of market concentration and managed care

The paper examines how hospital cost efficiency has reacted to extensive horizontal integrations of hospitals and rapid growth of managed care in the US health care industry. Cost efficiency is estimated by using panel data approaches to relax the assumptions for the hospital effects imposed in earlier studies. The paper shows that higher managed care penetration over time is associated with greater hospital efficiency, and higher market concentration is positively associated with efficiency when markets are highly competitive or highly concentrated.     

Why are Small Firms Different? Managers’ Views

Do incentives differ between large and small organizations? Results from a representative survey of compensation managers are used to shed light on the issues. I find that (i) small establishments rely less on pecuniary incentives, and have a significantly more hostile attitude towards incentive schemes based on competition and relative rewards; (ii) large units are more vulnerable to mechanisms of efficiency wages, effects that remain even after controlling for differences in monitoring ability; (iii) large units are more prone to indicate that negative reciprocity is important, and that their employees care about relative pay. I argue that these findings fit with behavioral stories of incentives and motivation, in particular those stressing group interaction effects, inequity aversion and gift exchange.