Statistical Inconsistency Research Articles

Female labor force participation: an international perspective.

This article gives an international perspective in regard to female participation in the labor force. In most countries women contribute less than men toward the value of recorded production. Social environment, statistical inconsistencies and methods of recording labor all contribute to this inequity. In Britain for instance, women caring for the household duties are in some studies considered to be part of the labor force and in other studies they are not. Further, internationally, women often find themselves in casual, temporary, or seasonal work that goes unrecorded. Defining what "labor force participation" constitutes is a key starting point to any survey. At what age is one considered employable? What constitutes a person "actively seeking" employment? Economists often try to explain labor force participation rate by age, sex, race and income groups and use this information to cite trends. The income-leisure model theorizes that choice of work or non-work by women is based primarily upon wages for work vs. wages for non-work. This theory sees non-labor income exerting a negative influence. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that women will choose work if wages are good regardless of any non-work benefits. Because most men are permanently in the labor force, estimates of labor reserves and projections of supply focus mostly on women. International generalizations are often misleading since trends vary widely among countries. During the last 20 years the global female participation rate has remained almost constant, but this is misleading. The percentage of working women in industrial countries increased 10%; developing countries showed a decrease of 7%. Female rates are often tied closely to shifts in the overall economy, (e.g., a transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy often sees a drop in female labor because subsistence jobs are lost). Of course the ability of women to bear children and the social expectations regarding child care often play a role. It is common in western industrialized countries to see drops in female participation during childbearing years. Countries with the lowest female participation rates are those with strong religious views about women in society, (e.g., Catholic and Muslim countries).

MICROBUSINESS ACCOUNTING AND MACROECONOMIC ACCOUNTING: THE LIMITS TO CONSISTENCY*

The paper is concerned with analyzing the consistency problem that arises when the macroenterprise sector of a nation's accounting system is put on a microdata foundation. This foundation is composed of sets of microbusiness accounts, after some appropriate rearrangements and reclassifications. We pose the question: can the macroenterprise sector accounts be regarded as a consolidation of (observed) microbusiness accounts? The answer is positive from a purely conceptual viewpoint, but negative from a statistical viewpoint which preserves the decision‐making records of microbusiness units. The latter phenomenon is referred to as the limits to (statistical) consistency while attempting to maintain the viability of a national accounting system.The analysis proceeds by exploiting the structural properties of market transactions matrices for a nation's economy. The results are sufficiently general to encompass the case where the transaction matrices are initially characterized by both sectoral discrepancies and transaction flow category discrepancies. In this general context it is shown that the statistical inconsistency potentially resulting from the replacement of the macroenterprise sector by an aggregation of microbusiness units has certain properties with economic meaning. This leads to a discussion that explains the ultimate rationale of statistical inconsistency: the fact that different microeconomic decision units may have different views and knowledge of common market transactions. The paper concludes with some implications for future research that appear to follow from the historical development of the subject matter.

Dimensionality of Body Awareness Revisited

In the past years, Bruchon-Schweitzer investigated body image and personality using Fisher's Body Focus Questionnaire. Eventually principal component analyses were performed on scores of males and females and the first two components were interpreted. Reihman and Fisher criticized the approach on statistical and methodological bases. This paper demonstrates that (i) there are severe inner statistical inconsistencies in their presentation and (ii) their argument largely contradicts Fisher's (1970) original work.

PROBLEMS OF IDENTIFYING AND MEASURING INTERMEDIATE (PRODUCER) SERVICES IN THE COMPILATION AND USE OF INPUT‐OUTPUT TABLES*

The paper is mainly concerned with statistical problems relating to intermediate services that arise in the construction of national input‐output (I–O) tables. Though these problems are sometimes discussed in the literature, their precise nature is usually not spelled out in any detail and this is done in the paper. The problems are closely related to the company‐establishment statistical dichotomy permeating the ultimate sources and allocation of intermediate services. Important examples can be found regarding the statistical treatment of head offices, research and development expenditures, and international trade of intermediate services. Presently used procedures for Canadian and U.S. I–O compilation show evidence of statistical inconsistencies and lack an appropriate framework to utilize full information. The paper suggests a possible approach for reconciling company and establishment data based on industrial organization linkage studies at the microlevel. Considerable empirical support is offered, using various official Canadian statistical publications, to show that the suggested approach is both feasible and has desirable properties.The paper goes on to argue that the contemporary information technology revolution has profound implications for I–O compilation and use with special reference to intermediate services. Four major implications are explained in the context of the growing microelectronics technological change and related literature. Some basic suggestions are put forward with regard to joint‐cost allocation and inter temporal comparisons problems with respect to I–O compilation. It also appears that some fundamental rethinking of commonly accepted standard industrial classification conventions may be called for in the near future if I–O tables are to remain relevant and viable. The paper thus features a somewhat broader view of I–O statistical problems than usual and attempts to show that this view is potentially appropriate to questions of economic policy formulation.

Some Estimation Effects of Selecting Economic Policy Horizons for Macroeconomic Models*

A basic IS‐LM model is used to discuss how parameter estimates may be affected if the observation period on data collected by policy makers (the model builders) differs from that of agents whose behaviour generates the data but who are not policy makers. Estimates may be both biased and inconsistent. In addition. the statistical inconsistency is a function not only of the difference in time horizons. but of the values of the policy instruments used by the policy makers. Optimal economic policy here thus involves the establishment òf instrument settings and particular levels of statistical inconsistencies in the estimated models.

Does colour shine in deep inelastic muon scattering at largeQ 2?

Recent data of muon scattering at large Q2 measuring the nucleon structure function, show a statistical inconsistency with QCD predictions (~). This experiment is the only one ranging on the high Q2 values (up to 120 (GeV)2). Although one should await confirmation of the reported sealing violation, we consider pert inent to analyse the results of BALL et al. (~). The analysis is carried out in the frame of the Pati-Salam model, assuming that colour shines as an extra degree of freedom at W 2 = 80 (GeV)% In the model of PATI and SALAbl (2), the structure function E 2 has the form

THE FOOD PURCHASES OF ELDERLY WOMEN LIVING ALONE: A STATISTICAL INCONSISTENCY AND ITS INVESTIGATION.

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