Multilateral Comparison Research Articles

On unit free assessment of the extent of multilateral distributional variation

SummaryMultilateral comparison of outcomes drawn from multiple groups pervade the social sciences and measurement of their variability, usually involving functions of respective group location and scale parameters, is of intrinsic interest. However, such approaches frequently mask more fundamental differences that more comprehensive examination of relative group distributional structures reveal. Indeed, in categorical data contexts, location- and scale-based techniques are no longer feasible without artificial and questionable cardinalisation of categories. Here, Gini’s transvariation measure is extended and employed in providing quantitative and visual multilateral comparison tools in discrete, continuous, categorical, univariate, or multivariate settings which are particularly useful in paradigms where cardinal measure is absent. Two applications, one analysing Eurozone cohesion in terms of the convergence or divergence of constituent nations income distributions, the other, drawn from a study of ageing, health, and income inequality in China, exemplify their use in a continuous and categorical data environment.

Non-parametric estimation and evaluation of capability sets

AbstractA major difficulty for the application of Amartya Sen’s capability approach is that individual capability sets cannot readily be observed. This article proposes a non-parametric framework to construct such sets, on the basis of observed functionings of individuals that are taken to belong to a group sharing the same capability set. Within this framework, the earlier theoretical proposals of Muellbauer to compare different capability sets can be easily implemented. Associated robust empirical estimators are provided and applied to EU-SILC data on household income, material living conditions, housing quality and health; we illustrate our approach with a multilateral comparison of 32 European countries, with a comparison of both a ‘fixed ray’ and a ‘multiple rays’ evaluation metric to compare French and German capability sets, and with a multilateral comparison of socioeconomic sub-groups in France.

Report of a Multilateral Accurate Measurement Comparison on a High-Precision Multimeter to Evaluate the Traceability Transfer from INRIM in the Field of Low-Frequency Electrical Quantities

As the calibration activity of modern electrical secondary laboratories operating in the five low-frequency quantities is carried out by means of high-precision digital multimeters (DMMs), it is of fundamental importance for their correct technical surveillance through suitable inter-laboratory comparisons (ILCs). The laboratory for calibration of multifunction electrical instruments of the National Institute of Metrology Research (INRIM-Lab) provides bilateral and multilateral ILCs involving high-precision DMMs to check the measurement capabilities of electrical laboratories. In particular, this paper deals with the last multilateral ILC that INRIM-Lab provided and carried out as reference measurements’ provider to which took part twelve Italian-accredited laboratories divided into two loops. The ILC was involved in a high-precision 8.5 digit high-precision DMM to be verified in a grid of about forty measurement points. The 2σ relative uncertainties of the INRIM-Lab calibrations ranged from 1.6 × 10−6 to 1.5 × 10−4, while those of the laboratories ranged from 2.0 × 10−6 to 2.2 × 10−3. The ILC had satisfactory results confirming the correctness of both the dissemination from INRIM and the accreditation process by the Italian accreditation body for calibration laboratories.

Substitution Bias in Multilateral Methods for CPI Construction Using Scanner Data

The use of multilateral comparison methods in a time series context is increasingly becoming an accepted approach for incorporating scanner data in a Consumer Price Index. The attractiveness stems from the ability to be able to control for chain drift bias. Consensus on two key issues has yet to be achieved: (i) the best multilateral method to use, and (ii) the best way of extending the resulting series when new observations become available. This paper presents theoretical and simulation evidence on the extent of substitution biases in alternative multilateral methods. The multilateral index number formulae studied include the GEKS, CCDI, Geary-Khamis and Weighted Time Product Dummy Methods as well as some price similarity linking methods. The paper also assesses alternative methods for extending non-revisable series, with particular regard to the possibility of introducing chain drift bias. Overall, our results suggest the use of the CCDI index with a new method, the “mean splice”, for updating.

Weather verbs in Latin, German, and other languages. Contrastive and typological remarks

This paper presents an overview of basic sentence patterns containing weather verbs/expressions in Latin and German. This bilateral comparison is then extended towards a multilateral comparison, taking into account some Japanese and Turkish weather verbs/expressions. Furthermore, a tertium comparationis, the so-called “meteo-scale” is sketched out, which places basic sentence patterns describing precipitation processes on a continuum containing two poles, the “phenomenon pole” and the “entity pole”, with intermediate spaces in between. This meteo-scale is illustrated and empirically justified with examples from many Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. Finally, the meteo-scale is compared to some other typological approaches.

해외 한식당 마케팅 커뮤니케이션 매체 및 한식당 이용에 대한 태도 분석 - 한식당 이용 경험 및 국가별 차이를 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study was to propose effective marketing communication strategies for overseas Korean restaurants through a multilateral comparison analysis of American, Chinese, and Japanese consumers` attitudes towards communication media and Korean restaurants. The survey was written in English, Chinese, and Japanese, with guideline for surveyors, and conducted using both online and offline methods. Samples were collected from five major cities - Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai, which are the foothold for the globalization of Korean food. When it comes to attitudes towards communication media, word-of-mouth showed a high mean value, indicating it as the most useful and reliable media recognized by consumers who visited Korean restaurants. Furthermore, the necessity of recognizing the importance of visual communication in the physical environment of Korean restaurants and specialized websites, featuring restaurants and gourmet food, was observed. Consumers in all three nations chose word-of-mouth as the most useful and reliable media for learning about Korean restaurants. In addition, American consumers highly depended on signage and restaurant exteriors. Chinese consumers highly recognized the usefulness and reliability of offline media, such as newspapers, magazines, and events, while Japanese consumers considered online media, such as gourmet websites, blogs and social networks, as useful and reliable sources. A significantly positive attitude and high value was observed in all who had visited Korean restaurants. American and Japanese consumers had a significantly higher rate of intention to visit Korean restaurants in the future and to tell others about their satisfaction with Korean restaurants. Meanwhile, the average rate of prior preference for Korean restaurants (when choosing restaurants) was the lowest in all three countries. This study is useful for both the Korean government and food enterprises abroad to plan and develop marketing communication strategies properly for overseas Korean restaurants.

The Mathematical Assessment of Long‐Range Linguistic Relationships

AbstractLanguage classification differs from biological cladistics in that monogenesis cannot be assumed. Before a cladogram or family tree can be accepted, linguists must be convinced that the languages are related at all. Morpheme tables, or word lists, provide a good framework for investigating relatedness, but methodologies for quantifying and assessing the data statistically are still being developed. The comparative method furnished a viable statistic, recurrent sound correspondences, but by no means to see whether they exceeded levels expected by chance. Organizing correspondences into contingency tables permitted hypothesis testing, with Monte Carlo resampling methods providing the flexibility to support a wide variety of test statistics, including different ways of computing sound recurrences and phonetic similarity. Thus, techniques from both the comparative method and multilateral comparison can be deployed with rigorous numeric assessment. Experiments seek to increase the power of the tests to explore new hypotheses and verify long‐range language relationships.

購買力平価と産業連関表の多国間比較

購買力平価と産業連関表の多国間比較

Multilateral Comparison of Electrical Power, Between the National Laboratories of Germany, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay

It is presented in this paper the results of a comparison in Electrical Power, between the National Laboratories of Germany: Physikalisch - Technischen Bundesanstalt (PTB), Argentina: Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (INTI), Brazil: Instituto Nacional de Metrología, Normalizaçao e Qualidade Industrial (INMETRO) and Uruguay: Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas (UTE), carried out during 2004. The instrument used as traveling standard was a power standard belonging to the PTB. The results show equivalent values in the deviations as well as in the declared uncertainties, for all participants.

Multilateral comparison on Chinese manufacturing’s international competitiveness

This paper analyses Chinese manufacturing performance from a multilateral perspective in 1980–2004. The PPPs, relative price levels, labor productivity and ULCs in multilateral comparison are used to explore Chinese manufacturing competitiveness. The PPPs are based on the benchmark year 1997. These results are compared to the previous estimates based on the 1987 benchmark. The findings are as follows: the PPPs derived by the different approaches in the base year 1997 in Chinese manufacturing are approximately 3.7 yuan/international $. Since the middle 1980s, China’s relative price level has been the lowest among all five countries and declined during the period of time. Its ULC has also been declining with some fluctuation. In the 1980s, there was “no catch-up rapid growth” in its labor productivity. However, after 1992, a beginning has been made with catch up distinctly, though from a very low level.

Finding Families: Quantitative Methods in Language Classification

Over the past two decades, many of the major controversies in historical linguistics have centred on language classification. Some of these controversies have been concentrated within linguistics, as in the methodological opposition of multilateral comparison to the traditional Comparative Method. Others have crossed discipline boundaries, with the question of whether correlations can be established between language families, archaeological cultures and genetic populations. At the same time, increasing emphasis on language contact has challenged the family tree as a model of linguistic relatedness. This paper argues that we must quantify language classification, to allow objective evaluation of alternative methods within linguistics, and of proposed cross–disciplinary correlations; and that a first step in this quantification is represented by the ‘borrowing’ of computational tools from biology.

A restricted‐domain multilateral test approach to the theory of international comparisons*

This article develops a novel multilateral test approach to the problem of international comparisons. Many of the associated tests are justified as “reasonable” using the fact that they are direct analogues to properties of the cost‐of‐living index. Further support is bestowed upon the new approach by showing that it is equivalent to an extended version of Diewert's (1986) multilateral test approach. Finally, a number of alternative multilateral comparison formulas are evaluated and the relative superiority of two of them is established.

Price structures, the quality factor, and chaining

This paper examines alternative approaches to multilateral comparisons based on spatial chains. The ground covered includes a review of the consistency problem for countries with multiple-benchmarks and a discussion of what might give rise to it. While much of our recent work has been with respect to the Penn World Table (PWT), most of this paper will be concerned with benchmark comparisons. In particular we argue that serious consideration be given to spatial chaining as a method of multilateral comparison, but there still remain major problems to solve. The case we make is as much empirical as it is methodological. Our application is to the 115 country 1996 reduced benchmark data. For this data set, we examine spatial linking based upon the spanning tree approach of Robert Hill, but using both price similarity as well as the Paasche-Laspeyres spread as criteria. We go on to describe how we might extend this benchmark over time and space along the lines of PWT.

The comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change Ed. by Mark Durie and Malcolm Ross (review)

BOOK NOTICES 893 movement of the volume from speech perception to language production. Although the editors acknowledge that important aspects of research m Spanish psycholinguistics have been omitted for lack of space, e.g. language acquisition and bilinguahsm, the book documents convincingly the impressive accomplishments in this field. [Glenn Frankenfield, University ofMaine at Farmington.] The comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change. Ed. by Mark Durie and Malcolm Ross. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. vi, 321. $75.00. This volume brings together ten chapters on the controversial subject of what is regular and what is irregular in language change and is concerned with the limitations and potential of the comparative method (CM). To this end, many of the chapters include applications of CM under challenging circumstances . Two are concerned with morphology and semantics, respectively, areas usually not considered to be within the purview of CM. In the first part of their erudite and provocative 'Introduction', Ross and Durie blend a summary of the contents of the volume with a discussion of the steps of CM and include a valuable discussion of what CM is not. Multilateral comparison, in a fundamental way, is not part of CM. The second part then deals with the ongoing paradigm shift in the way comparativists work—away from the quasi-Darwinian neogrammarian hypothesis which has heretofore underlain our conception of regularity in language change towards a speaker-oriented perspective which questions the difference between so-called regular change and change diffused lexically. The latter may introduce apparent irregularities owing to speakeroriented factors having to do with speech organs, communicative exigency, contact, etc. Johanna Nichols, 'The comparative method as heuristic' , demonstrates that paradigmacity is crucial in establishing linguistic relatedness and that two unrelated languages are unlikely to have more than a miniscule percentage of nonmarginal morphemes in common which match in form and meaning. Lexical comparison, by itself, is diagnostic of nothing. Lyle Campbell, 'On sound change and challenges to irregularity ', focusses upon linguistic and sociocultural factors such as sound symbolism, onomatopoeia, avoidance ofhomophony, etc., which may interfere with regularity but do not undermine the principle of regularity itself. Mark Durie, 'Early Germanic umlaut and variable rules', argues that some regular sound changes are not categorical, but probabilistic. George Grace, 'Regularity of change in what?', questions some usual assumptions about CM and concludes that its successful use depends upon congruence of linguistic communities and linguistically defined units. Malcolm Ross, 'Contactinduced change and the comparative method. Cases from Papua New Guinea', examines data involving typological change which is usually not treated within CM. Harold Koch, 'Reconstruction in morphology ', makes a distinction between morphological change and sound change in morphemes and presents a valuable typology of morphological change. David Wilkins, 'Natural tendencies of semantic change and the search for cognates', presents methodologies to assess semantic similarity and argues that there are natural tendencies of semantic change involving core vocabulary. This provocative volume has much to teach everyone working in comparative-historical linguistics. [Joseph F. Eska, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.] The verbal system of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph story: An approach from discourse analysis. By Yoshinobu Endo. (Studia semítica neerlandica, 32.) Assen: Van Gorcum, 1996. Pp. xiv, 351. Classical or biblical Hebrew is perhaps the language that has received the largest amount of scholarly attention relative to the modest size of its attestation—the books known as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Still no consensus has been reached with respect to its verbal system. The problem is whether the main inflectional categories are marked for tense or for aspect. In either case, there are both simple and compound forms with seemingly identical markings. Thus, e.g. (simple) qatal and (compound) wa-yiqtol may both be said to refer to the past, but it is not always clear what factors determine the choice for one form or the other. In the published version of his 1993 Bristol doctoral dissertation, Endo tackles the problem anew. His theoretical framework is discourse analysis, a school of thought which prefers not to regard the sentence as the highest level of grammatical description . Instead, it claims that sentences should always be seen in relation to each other...

LINGUISTICS, GENETICS AND ARCHAEOLOGY: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL EVIDENCE IN THE AMERIND CONTROVERSY*

ABSTRACTGreenberg (1987a) argues, on the basis of his technique of multilateral comparison, for a classification of New World languages into three groups, including the ‘superfamily’ Amerind. Greenberg and his collaborators defend this classification using linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence. In this paper, we assess the validity of all three types of evidence, and pursue the consequences of our assessment for multilateral comparison, for Greenberg's tripartite classification, and for the unity of the ‘Amerind’ phylum. We aim to show that the external evidence Greenberg cites is either not truly independent, or does not strongly support his conclusions, and that his linguistic methodology is both unreliable and statistically intractable. The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. (T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral)

Production analysis in different time periods: An application of data envelopment analysis

This article explores a new application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for comparing performances in different time periods. The DEA multilateral comparison opens up a new efficiency concept referred to as “Overall Time Efficiency”, which is further broken down into four efficiency concepts in this study: overall efficiency, price efficiency, scale efficiency and time efficiency. A new DEA approach is also proposed to empirically measure these new efficiency concepts. Two data sets are used for illustrating such DEA applications to production analysis in different time periods.

Multilateral Comparison of Cost Structures in the Input–Output Tables of Japan, the US and West Germany

This paper presents a multilateral comparison of relative levels and structures of costs of production in Japan, the US and West Germany. The analysis is carried out by using harmonized input–output tables, which are converted at US prices by using adjusted sectoral purchasing power parities. A new accounting methodology is derived from recent developments of index number theory, whereas the chosen multilateral comparison procedure gives results that are invariant with respect to the order of the pairs of countries examined.