Temperature and Malaria Trends in Highland East Africa

There has been considerable debate on the existence of trends in climate in the highlands of East Africa and hypotheses about their potential effect on the trends in malaria in the region. We apply a new robust trend test to mean temperature time series data from three editions of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit database (CRU TS) for several relevant locations. We find significant trends in the data extracted from newer editions of the database but not in the older version for periods ending in 1996. The trends in the newer data are even more significant when post-1996 data are added to the samples. We also test for trends in the data from the Kericho meteorological station prepared by Omumbo et al. We find no significant trend in the 1979-1995 period but a highly significant trend in the full 1979-2009 sample. However, although the malaria cases observed at Kericho, Kenya rose during a period of resurgent epidemics (1994-2002) they have since returned to a low level. A large assembly of parasite rate surveys from the region, stratified by altitude, show that this decrease in malaria prevalence is not limited to Kericho

Probit model forecasts of national and state manufacturing and construction employment downturns

This study extends Shoesmith (2003) by generating probit model forecasts of downturns in national and state manufacturing and construction employment, using average weekly hours in manufacturing (HRS) and housing permits (HP), respectively, as explanatory variables. In each case the yield spread (SPREAD) is used as an alternative to HRS or HP. The expected result is that HRS and HP are more effective than SPREAD in forecasting downturns in related sectors of employment. However, the estimation and forecast results for the nation and 50 states show that SPREAD is in general more useful than HRS and HP, primarily because of the short lead times provided by the leading indicators. Copyright RSAI 2005.

A metric approach for ordinal regression

A metric approach for ordinal regression. - In: Classification and knowledge organization / Rüdiger Klar ... (ed.). - Berlin u.a. : Springer, 1997. - S. 28- 35. - (Studies in classification, data analysis, and knowledge organization

Factor analysis regression

Factor analysis regression (FAR), Principal component regression (PCR), Multicollinearity, Errors-in-variables model,

Estimating Price Responses of German Imports and Exports

This paper estimates trade-demand functions for Germany from monthly data covering the period 1959-1988. It is assumed that these trade-demand functions have the form of the Linear Expenditure System, generated by a shifted Cobb-Douglas trade-utility function in which the shift parameter is postulated to be a function of time (including trend and seasonal components) and to have a stochastic term with a lognormal distribution. A procedure called generalized maximum likelihood is used, and the results are compared with those of nonlinear least squares as a benchmark. The approach is applied to two models: (1) a six-commodity model in which the dependent variables are net imports in six categories and the independent variables are six weighted averages of the import- and export-price indices for these categories as well as the trade deficit; (2) a twelve-commodity model in which the dependent variables are the gross imports and gross exports (the latter measured negatively) in the six categories and the independent variables are the twelve import- and export-price indices and the trade deficit. The latter model thus handles the case of “intra-industry trade”