Reconciling household surveys and national accounts data using a cross entropy estimation method:

This paper presents an approach to reconciling household surveys and national accounts data that starts from the assumption that the macro data represent control totals to which the household data must be reconciled. The economic data gathered in the survey are also assumed to be accurate, or have been adjusted to be accurate. Given these assumptions, the problem is how to use the additional information provided by the national accounts data to re-estimate the household weights used in the survey so that the survey results are consistent with the aggregate data. The estimation approach represents an efficient “information processing rule” using an estimation criterion based on an entropy measure of information. The survey household weights are treated as a prior. New weights are estimated that are close to the prior using a cross-entropy metric and that are also consistent with the additional information. This approach is implemented to reconcile LSMS survey data and macro data for Madagascar. The results indicate that the approach is powerful and flexible, supporting the efficient use of information from a variety of sources to reconcile data at different levels of aggregation in a consistent framework.National income Accounting., Household surveys., Madagascar.,

The social impact of a WTO agreement in Indonesia

Indonesia experienced rapid growth and the expansion of the formal financial sector during the last quarter of the 20th century. Although this tendency was reversed by the shock of the financial crisis that spread throughout Asia in 1997 and 1998, macroeconomic stability has since then been restored, and poverty has been reduced to pre-crisis levels. Poverty reduction remains nevertheless a critical challenge for Indonesia with over 110 million people (53 percent of the population) living on less than $2 a day. The objective of this study is to help identify ways in which the Doha Development Agenda might contribute to further poverty reduction in Indonesia. To provide a good technical basis for answering this question, the authors use an approach that combines a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a microsimulation model. This framework is designed to capture important channels through which macroeconomic shocks affect household incomes. It allows making recommendations on specific trade reform options as well as on complementary development policy reforms. The framework presented in this study generates detailed poverty outcomes of trade shocks. Given the magnitude of the shocks examined here and the structural features of the Indonesian economy, only the full liberalization scenario generates significant poverty changes. The authors examine their impact under alternative specifications of the functioning of labor markets. These alternative assumptions generate different results, all of which confirm that the impact of full liberalization on poverty would be beneficial, with wage and employment gains dominating the adverse food price changes that could hurt the poorest households. Two alternative tax replacement schemes are examined. While direct tax replacement appears to be more desirable in terms of efficiency gains and translates into higher poverty reduction, political and practical considerations could lead the Government of Indonesia to choose a replacement scheme through the adjustment of value-added tax rates across nonexempt sectors.Rural Poverty Reduction,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Assessment,Achieving Shared Growth,Inequality

Folding of a single domain protein entering the endoplasmic reticulum precedes disulfide formation

The relationship between protein synthesis, folding and disulfide formation within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is poorly understood. Previous studies have suggested pre-existing disulfide links are absolutely required to allow protein folding and, conversely, that protein folding occurs prior to disulfide formation. To address the question of what happens first within the ER; that is, protein folding or disulfide formation, we studied folding events at the early stages of polypeptide chain translocation into the mammalian ER using stalled translation intermediates. Our results demonstrate that polypeptide folding can occur without complete domain translocation. Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) interacts with these early intermediates, but disulfide formation does not occur unless the entire sequence of the protein domain is translocated. This is the first evidence that folding of the polypeptide chain precedes disulfide formation within a cellular context and highlights key differences between protein folding in the ER and refolding of purified proteins

The use of risk-based discrete choice experiments to capture preferences over health states

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) allow a number of characteristics to be traded-off against one another. An overriding methodological challenge faced is how best to apply DCEs to questions involving those attributes commonly used in value elicitation exercises such as risk, time (Bansback et al. 2012) and numbers treated (Robinson et al, 2010). Flynn (2010) concluded that in developing the methods, it was important to understand more fully the preferences of individual respondents. The study reported here sets out to provide such insights by enhancing a DCE design with additional questions that allow utility values to be derived at the individual level also. The DCE presented respondents with eight pairwise risky choices to estimate aggregate utility values for three EQ-5D health states, ranging from mild to severe. The design allowed the elicitation of utility values for worse-than-dead states. Risk was represented using the stimulus used by EuroVaQ (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/eurovaq/). Three main devices were used to collect additional individual level data. Firstly we included six additional DCE questions that were not used to estimate the aggregate DCE model but allowed the utility value of one health state to be estimated at the level of the individual. These six questions provided more extensive tests of the internal consistency of the pairwise choices undertaken in the DCE. Secondly, respondents were asked three questions where the risk in one of the two treatments was fixed, and they set the risk of the other treatment (a modified SG question). These questions then allowed us to estimate utility values for all three health states. Finally, we collected respondents risk attitudes using Kuilen and Wakker's 2011 measure. We collected data on a convenient sample of 59 students studying Economics or Geography at the University of London and Exeter in 2011/12. Preliminary results show that 22 of the 59 respondents gave a series of DCE responses that were internally inconsistent. We report here the implications of the results for the inclusion of risk as an attribute in DCEs and for preference elicitation more broadly

Are Some Deaths Worse Than Others? The Effect of 'Labelling' on People's Perceptions

This paper sets out to explore the extent to which perceptions regarding the 'badness' of different types of deaths differ according to how those deaths are 'labelled' in the elicitation procedure. In particular, we are interested in whether responses to 'contextual' questions - where the specific context in which the deaths occur is known - differ from 'generic' questions - where the context is unknown. Further, we set out to test whether sensitivity to the numbers of deaths differs across the 'generic' and 'contextual' versions of the questions. We uncover evidence to suggest that both the perceived 'badness' of different types of deaths and sensitivity to the numbers of deaths may differ according to whether 'generic' or 'contextual' descriptions are used. Qualitative data suggested two reasons why responses to 'generic' and 'contextual' questions differed: firstly, some influential variables were omitted from the 'generic' descriptions and secondly, certain variables were interpreted somewhat differently once the context had been identified. The implications of our findings for 'generic' questions, such as those commonly used in health economics (for example, the EQ 5D), are discussed.Preferences, Context effects, Affect heuristic

Essential guidelines for computational method benchmarking

In computational biology and other sciences, researchers are frequently faced with a choice between several computational methods for performing data analyses. Benchmarking studies aim to rigorously compare the performance of different methods using well-characterized benchmark datasets, to determine the strengths of each method or to provide recommendations regarding suitable choices of methods for an analysis. However, benchmarking studies must be carefully designed and implemented to provide accurate, unbiased, and informative results. Here, we summarize key practical guidelines and recommendations for performing high-quality benchmarking analyses, based on our experiences in computational biology.Comment: Minor update

Essential guidelines for computational method benchmarking

In computational biology and other sciences, researchers are frequently faced with a choice between several computational methods for performing data analyses. Benchmarking studies aim to rigorously compare the performance of different methods using well-characterized benchmark datasets, to determine the strengths of each method or to provide recommendations regarding suitable choices of methods for an analysis. However, benchmarking studies must be carefully designed and implemented to provide accurate, unbiased, and informative results. Here, we summarize key practical guidelines and recommendations for performing high-quality benchmarking analyses, based on our experiences in computational biology

Natural Language Generation for Nature Conservation : Automating Feedback to help Volunteers identify Bumblebee Species

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