Journal of Economic and Social Measurement

This paper illustrates that questionnaire design significantly affects estimates of household consumption and absolute poverty. In a between-groups designed experiment in El Salvador, longer, more detailed questions on consumption result in an estimate of mean, household consumption that is 31 percent greater than the estimate derived from a condensed version of the questionnaire. The distribution of household consumption from the long questionnaire first-order stochastically dominates the distribution from the short questionnaire over 96 percent of the range of the distribution. This difference in estimated consumption results in a measure of absolute, severe poverty from the short questionnaire that is 46 percent greater than the estimate derived from the long questionnaire. In contrast, the level of relative poverty is unaffected by the changes in questionnaire design. An implication of this paper is that modifications over time to questionnaires will result in spurious estimates of change in consumption and absolute poverty levels.

This paper discusses the concept of goodness-of-fit tests for 5-point rating scale data. Major problems of such tests include the lack of formulation of parameter estimates needed to run the tests, and the lack of computer capabilities for major statistical packages. We address these by implementing the minimum chi-square method. Steps for carrying out this method are outlined. Results of fitting 484 5-point Likert scale variables from diverse Management and Marketing surveys are fitted to normal, lognormal, beta, gamma, and Weibull distributions. Results show, among other things, that some continuous distribution is not an unreasonable fit for 49% tested.

This article aims at drawing the measurement index for urban infrastructure production cost disparity. Due to the difference in local public financial resource, a disparity will eventually occur and determine the actual provision level of urban infrastructure. Other than the above, various social and economic factors, such as average land prices (ALP) in each city, financial dependency ratio (FDR), population density (PD), discharge facilities for environmental pollution (EPF), distribution ratio on sewage system (DRSEW), and road pavement ratio (RDPVR), will affect the urban infrastructure provision. In this article, we first build a theoretical framework by reviewing the existing studies regarding the presumption on production cost disparity. Next, we establish the models of inducing type expenditure function, and through this, analyze the actual impact that the social and economic environmental variables have on the production cost. Using Korean data, the disparity index is estimated and interpreted.

Average land price which is calculated through 449,925 standard lots across nations, number of automobiles per road length within city, etc are used for empirical estimation. Major findings will be helpful in managing the budget in relation to intergovernmental grants and expenditures.

The US Department of Health and Human Services currently sponsors a number of national surveys that have different primary objectives and methodologies, but all can be used in different ways to produce general estimates of the use of ambulatory care in the United States. Among these surveys are the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Through a comparison of 1996 survey estimates, this paper describes important methodological considerations when using these different data sources for measuring ambulatory use. This paper complements a previous article comparing estimates of hospital inpatient utilization across several federal data sources.

This paper proposes an algorithm to match Current Population Survey (CPS) respondents based on Bayes' rule. For each naive match, Bayes' rule is used to calculate conditional probability of being correct or not, given certain characteristics of the respondent. This conditional probability is then used to validate or invalidate the match. In an example to match CPS March supplements, Type I and Type II errors are derived for the proposed algorithm and the one by Madrian and Lefgren. The proposed algorithm is more efficient in that it tends to reject less correct matches. The paper also uncovers the recycling pattern of CPS household identifiers. Based on this recycling pattern, the proposed algorithm is also extended to the matching of CPS basic monthly data sets.