Land degradation is a major threat to the sustainability of human habitation, and it is essential to assess it quantitatively. Assessment of the human-induced aspect is especially important for planning appropriate prevention measures. This paper used the Three-North Shelter Forest Program region as the study area, and assessed the land degradation dynamic using a time series of summed normaliz...

Since its implementation in 1990 the human development index (HDI), the flagship indicator of multidimensional development, has attracted a great deal of attention and critics in academic, political and media circles. It initiated a new stage in the discussion of appropriate indicators to measure socioeconomic development. Until now, the vast majority of empirical work using the HDI-concept tak...

Theil, Basmann, and Sargan are often credited with the development of the two-stage least squares (TSLS) estimator of the coefficients of one structural equation in a simultaneous equations model. However, Anderson and Rubin had earlier derived the asymptotic distribution of the limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimator by finding the asymptotic distribution of what is essentially...

from the opening article in Die medicinische Reform: "Die Arzte sind die naturlichen Anwalte der Armen und die sociale Frage fallt zu einem erheblichen Theil in ihre Jurisdiction." The continued interest of the issues addressed in Virchow's weekly is shown by the present photomechanical reproduction from East Germany. It comes not many years after a West German edition (Georg Olms Verlag, Hilde...

from the opening article in Die medicinische Reform: "Die Arzte sind die naturlichen Anwalte der Armen und die sociale Frage fallt zu einem erheblichen Theil in ihre Jurisdiction." The continued interest of the issues addressed in Virchow's weekly is shown by the present photomechanical reproduction from East Germany. It comes not many years after a West German edition (Georg Olms Verlag, Hilde...

As a versatile investment tool in energy markets for speculators and hedgers, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) futures are quite well known. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid model incorporating ARCH family models and ANN model to forecast GSCI futures price. Empirical results show that the hybrid ARCH(1)-M-ANN model is superior to ARIMA, ARCH(1),GARCH(1,1), EGARCH(1,1) and ARIMA-...

The German Economy is not only affected by the Unification of Germany but by a significant influx of immigrants from abroad and huge migration from East to West Germany around the date of unification. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) allows to disentangle those effects by decomposition of the Theil I (0)-Index of inequality. In addition, the paper offers insights in the t...