De facto anonymised microdata file on income tax statistics 1998

With the data of the de facto anonymised Income Tax Statistics 1998 (FAST 98), the German official statistics are for the first time publishing microdata from the field of fiscal statistics. The scientific community can use these data to analyse politically-relevant questions on the fiscal and transfer system at their own workplace, subject to the premises of article 16 subsection 6 of the Law on Statistics for Federal Purposes, on the basis of "real" assessment data. Passing on individual data to the scientific community is only possible in a de facto anonymised form. This form may impair possibilities for scientific analysis possibilities. So that anonymised data can nevertheless be used by the scientific community, anonymisation must meet two equal challenges: It must firstly guarantee adequate protection of the individual items of data, and secondly it must optimally conserve the possibilities for analysis of the anonymised data. In order to achieve the right balance between these two goals, the Statistical Offices have involved potential scientific users in the anonymisation work in a research project.In the article entitled "De facto anonymised microdata file on income tax statistics 1998", in addition to the anonymisation concept the framework conditions of the project are explained and the analysis possibilities of income tax statistics demonstrated

Representative Time Use Data and Calibration of the American Time Use Studies 1965-1999

Valid and reliable individual time use data in connection with an appriate set of socio -economic background variables are essential elements of an empirical foundation and evaluation of existing time use theories and for the search of new empirical-based hypotheses about individual behavior. Within the Yale project of Assessing American Heritage Time Use Studies (1965, 1975, 19895, 1992-94 and 1998/99), supported by the Glaser Foundation, and working with these time use studies, it is necessary to be sure about comparable representative data. As it will become evident, there is a serious bias in all of these files concerning demographic characteristics, characteristics which are important for substantive time use research analyses. Our study and new calibration solution will circumvent these biases by delivering a comprehensive demographic adjustment for all incorporated U.S. time use surveys, which is theoretically funded (here by information theory and the minimum information loss principle with its ADJUST program package), is consistent by a simultaneous weighting including hierarchical data, considers substantial requirements for time use research analyses and is similar and thus comparable in the demographic adjustment characteristics for all U.S. time use files to support substantial analyses and allows to disentangle demographic vs. time use behavioral changes and developments.time use, calibration (adjustment re-weighting) of microdata, information theory, minimum information loss principle, American Heritage Time Use Studies, ADJUST program package

De facto anonymised microdata file on income tax statistics 1998

With the data of the de facto anonymised Income Tax Statistics 1998 (FAST 98), the German official statistics are for the first time publishing microdata from the field of fiscal statistics. The scientific community can use these data to analyse politically-relevant questions on the fiscal and transfer system at their own workplace, subject to the premises of article 16 subsection 6 of the Law on Statistics for Federal Purposes, on the basis of "real" assessment data. Passing on individual data to the scientific community is only possible in a de facto anonymised form. This form may impair possibilities for scientific analysis possibilities. So that anonymised data can nevertheless be used by the scientific community, anonymisation must meet two equal challenges: It must firstly guarantee adequate protection of the individual items of data, and secondly it must optimally conserve the possibilities for analysis of the anonymised data. In order to achieve the right balance between these two goals, the Statistical Offices have involved potential scientific users in the anonymisation work in a research project.In the article entitled "De facto anonymised microdata file on income tax statistics 1998", in addition to the anonymisation concept the framework conditions of the project are explained and the analysis possibilities of income tax statistics demonstrated.microdata, de facto anonymization, income tax statistic

"Rotterdam econometrics": publications of the econometric institute 1956-2005

This paper contains a list of all publications over the period 1956-2005, as reported in the Rotterdam Econometric Institute Reprint series during 1957-2005.

Time Use and Time Budgets – Improvements, Future Challenges and Recommendations

“Time-use statistics offer a unique tool for exploring a wide range of policy concerns including social change; division of labour; allocation of time for household work; the estimation of the value of household production; transportation; leisure and recreation; pension plans; and health-care programmes, among others” (United Nations). This expertise will discuss recent developments, improvements and future challenges of time use and time budgets for policy and research with focus on international and in particular German national developments. It is written in the sequel of the last German KVI commission report on the improvement of the information infrastructure between sciences and statistics. Topics are: recent :international time use institutions, data archives and surveys; German time use data bases and their access, actual time use research fields and studies; time use and economic and social policy; new methods in time use survey sampling, future developments and European and international challenges. The conclusions recommend first of all a new German Time Use Survey GTUS 2011/12 and urgently calls for its financing and start of organisation. Specific GTUS improvements, SOEP time use issues, a brand new time use panel and a permanent establishment of the German research data centres (RDCs) are recommended in addition.Time use, time budgets and time use surveys, time use data

Microsimulation - A Survey of Methods and Applications for Analyzing Economic and Social Policy

This essential dimensions of microsimulation as an instrument to analyze and forecast the individual impacts of alternative economic and social policy measures are surveyed in this study. The basic principles of microsimulation, which is a tool for practical policy advising as well as for research and teaching, are pointed out and the static and dynamic (cross-section and life-cycle) approaches are compared to one another. Present and past developments of microsimulation models and their areas of application are reviewed, focusing on the US, Europe and Australia. Based on general requirements and components of microsimulation models a microsimulation model's actual working mechanism are discussed by a concrete example: the concept and realization of MICSIM, a PC microsimulation model based on a relational database system, an offspring of the Sfb 3 Statitic Microsimulation Model. Common issues of microsimulation modeling are regarded: micro/macro link, behavioural response and the important question of evaluating microsimulation results. The concluding remarks accentuate the increasing use of microcomputers for microsimulation models also for teaching purposes.Microsimulation, Microanalytic Simulation Models, Microanalysis, Economic and Social Policy Analysis

Preferred vs. Actual Working Hours - A Ten Years Paneleconometric Analysis for Professions, Entrepreneurs and Employees in Germany

Labour market dynamics according the individual working hour tension (preferred working hours minus actual working hours) of active people with focus on the self-employed, as professions and entrepreneurs, and employees are investigated in our study. The individual longitudinal analysis based on panel data allows us to follow the individual process of working time preferences and actual outcomes in its individual convergence/divergence balancing process in the course of time. Our microanalytic and paneleconometric results (with pooled, one and two factor fixed and random effects models) quantify the working hour tension developments and its determinants in a decade from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. Microdata base is the German Socio-Economic Panel with ten waves from 1985 to 1994. Finally, we discuss impacts of our results for labour market strategies and a targeted economic and social policy

A Special Issue on Statistical Challenges and Opportunities in Electronic Commerce Research

This special issue is a product of the First Interdisciplinary Symposium on Statistical Challenges and Opportunities in Electronic Commerce Research, which took place on May 22--23, 2005, at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park (\url{www.smith.umd.edu/dit/statschallenges/}). The symposium brought together, for the first time, researchers from statistics, information systems, and related fields, all of whom work or are interested in empirical research related to electronic commerce. The goal of the symposium was to cross the borders, discuss joint research opportunities, expose this field and its statistical challenges, and promote collaboration between the different fields.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000178 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Time and income poverty: An interdependent multidimensional poverty approach with German time use diary data

Income as the traditional one dimensional measure in well-being and poverty analyses is extended in recent studies by a multidimensional poverty concept, however, two important aspects are missing: time as an important dimension and the interdependence of the often only separately counted multiple poverty dimensions. Our paper will contribute to both aspects: We consider time – and income – both as important resources of everyday activities; the interdependence of the poverty dimensions will be evaluated by the German population. Referring to the time dimension, we follow Sen’s capability approach and argue, that restricted genuine, leisure time might exclude from social participation. The substitution between income and genuine leisure time is estimated by a CES-utility function of general utility with the German Socio-Economic Panel. We disentangle time, income and interdependent multidimensional poverty regimes characterising the working poor by a multinomial logit based on German 2001/02 time use diary data. One striking result: the substitution between time and income is significant and we find an important fraction of time poor who are unable to substitute their time deficit by income. These poor people are ignored within the poverty and well-being as well as the time crunch/time famine discussion so far.Interdependent multidimensional time and income poverty, time and income substitution, extended economic well-being, satisfaction, CES utility function estimation, working poor, German Socio-Economic Panel, German Time Use Surveys 2001/02.

Evaluating Pricing Strategy Using e-Commerce Data: Evidence and Estimation Challenges

As Internet-based commerce becomes increasingly widespread, large data sets about the demand for and pricing of a wide variety of products become available. These present exciting new opportunities for empirical economic and business research, but also raise new statistical issues and challenges. In this article, we summarize research that aims to assess the optimality of price discrimination in the software industry using a large e-commerce panel data set gathered from Amazon.com. We describe the key parameters that relate to demand and cost that must be reliably estimated to accomplish this research successfully, and we outline our approach to estimating these parameters. This includes a method for ``reverse engineering'' actual demand levels from the sales ranks reported by Amazon, and approaches to estimating demand elasticity, variable costs and the optimality of pricing choices directly from publicly available e-commerce data. Our analysis raises many new challenges to the reliable statistical analysis of e-commerce data and we conclude with a brief summary of some salient ones.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000187 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org