Accuracy of areal interpolation methods for count data

The combination of several socio-economic data bases originating from different administrative sources collected on several different partitions of a geographic zone of interest into administrative units induces the so called areal interpolation problem. This problem is that of allocating the data from a set of source spatial units to a set of target spatial units. A particular case of that problem is the re-allocation to a single target partition which is a regular grid. At the European level for example, the EU directive 'INSPIRE', or INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation, encourages the states to provide socio-economic data on a common grid to facilitate economic studies across states. In the literature, there are three main types of such techniques: proportional weighting schemes, smoothing techniques and regression based interpolation. We propose a stochastic model based on Poisson point patterns to study the statistical accuracy of these techniques for regular grid targets in the case of count data. The error depends on the nature of the target variable and its correlation with the auxiliary variable. For simplicity, we restrict attention to proportional weighting schemes and Poisson regression based methods. Our conclusion is that there is no technique which always dominates

Natural disasters and household welfare : evidence from Vietnam

As natural disasters hit with increasing frequency, especially in coastal areas, it is imperative to better understand how much natural disasters affect economies and their people. This requires disaggregated measures of natural disasters that can be reliably linked to households, the first challenge this paper tackles. In particular, a methodology is illustrated to create natural disaster and hazard maps from first hand, geo-referenced meteorological data. In a second step, the repeated cross-sectional national living standard measurement surveys (2002, 2004, and 2006) from Vietnam are augmented with the natural disaster measures derived in the first phase, to estimate the welfare effects associated with natural disasters. The results indicate that short-run losses from natural disasters can be substantial, with riverine floods causing welfare losses of up to 23 percent and hurricanes reducing welfare by up to 52 percent inside cities with a population over 500,000. Households are better able to cope with the short-run effects of droughts, largely due to irrigation. There are also important long-run negative effects, in Vietnam mostly so for droughts, flash floods, and hurricanes. Geographical differentiation in the welfare effects across space and disaster appears partly linked to the functioning of the disaster relief system, which has so far largely eluded households in areas regularly affected by hurricane force winds.Natural Disasters,Hazard Risk Management,Disaster Management,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Adaptation to Climate Change

Monetary policy as a source of uncertainty

This paper proposes a model in which control variations induce an increase in the uncertainty of the system. The aim of our paper is to provide a stochastic theoretical model that can be used to explain under which uncertainty conditions monetary policy rules should be less or more aggressive, or, simply, applied or not.

The Effects of the SSRI Paroxetine on Feeding Rates of the Larval Mosquito Aedes aegypti

Paroxetine is an antidepressant drug that is found in aquatic habitats. It is a serotonin specific reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) that increases the amount of serotonin in synapses, mimicking increased activity of serotonergic pathways. Studying the effects of the SSRI paroxetine in freshwater animals such as Aedes aegypti larvae (mosquito larva) may help us see what physical and behavioral impact the drug may have on these animals and how it may affect the ecosystem. The testing of feeding rates of mosquito larvae exposed to paroxetine was conducted because of the known influence of serotonin on appetite. In order to see the influence of serotonin on appetite Aedes aegypti were exposed to different concentrations of paroxetine (1x10-5, 1x10-6, and 1x10-7 mmol/L). The effect of paroxetine on feeding rates are expected to affect growth and development of mosquitoes, suggesting ways that paroxetine and other SSRIs in the environment will likely alter the ecosystem