The distribution of benefits from improvements in urban air quality

This paper analyzes the distribution of benefits from an air pollution control strategy for the Boston metropolitan area. Average benefits to seven income groups are measured by physical improvements in air quality and by dollar values, using housing value and health damage approaches to estimate willingness to pay. Benefits include those in the work environment as well as at home. Physical benefits at home are found to be greater for the poor rather than for the rich; when measured in monetary terms with workplace benefits included, however, the distribution is much less pro-poor.     

Statistical Estimation and Model Selection of Species-Accumulation Functions

Abstract:  Soberón and Llorente (1993) proposed pure-birth stochastic processes as theoretical models for species-accumulation curves, and these processes have frequently been used to describe the progress of biological inventories. We describe, in algorithmic form, an alternative statistical analysis based on a likelihood approach ( Díaz-Francés & Gorostiza 2002 ) that provides mathematical rigor to the ideas in Soberón and Llorente (1993) and improves the estimation of the models by incorporating the facts that the variance of the error is not constant and that the observations are correlated. Additionally, we used the likelihood ratios between candidate models as an objective procedure for model selection, allowing comparison between the goodness of fit of various models. The software for these statistical methods can now be downloaded off the Internet. We used two examples of butterfly data sets to illustrate the use of the methods and the software.     

民营企业安全文化模型及其实证分析

针对民营企业特点,基于交互安全文化模型,建立民营企业安全文化模型并辨识 关键元素,以赛轮金宇股份有限公司为例进行实证分析。在广泛参考国内外相关研究的 基础上,设计调查问卷,运用粗糙集ROSETTA软件对测量结果进行属性简约,最终确定 15个安全文化元素;借助MATLAB,采用熵权法确定各元素权重,然后进行可拓综合评价 。评价结果表明该企业的“高层管理者重视”一项得分为4.82,水平较高,整体文化等 级属于“良”,级别特征变量j*=3.138 1。“创造安全舒适的工作环境”、“建立合理 的奖惩制度”、“定期进行应急演练”3个方面得分偏低,是安全文化建设需要重点加 强的方面。