This year's edition of International Debt Statistics, successor to Global Development Finance and World Debt Tables, and the fourth in the series, is designed to respond to user demand for timely, comprehensive data on trends in external debt in low- and middle-income countries. It also provides summary information on the external debt of high-income countries and public (domestic and external) debt for a select group of countries. The World Bank's Debtor Reporting System (DRS), from which the aggregate and country tables presented in this report are drawn, wasestablished in 1951. World Debt Tables, the first publication that included DRS external debt data, appeared in 1973 and gained increased attention during the debt crisis of the 1980s. Since then, the publication and data have undergone numerous revisions and iterations to address the challenges and demands posed by the global economic conditions. Presentation and access to data have been refined to improve the user experience. The printed edition of International Debt Statistics 2016 now provides a summary overview and a select set of indicators, while an expanded dataset is available online (datatopics.worldbank.org / debt/ids).

Gender inequalities in life expectancy provide a broader picture by combining two sets of statistical measures: the usual static gap at a given point in time and the innovative S-time-distance measure as the gap in time for a given level of the indicator.

Firstly, this offers an innovative approach for looking at disparities over many units and over time. The new S-time-distance measure, expressed in time units, is easy to understand by everybody and offers a novel way to compare situations in economics, politics, business, and statistics.

Secondly, while women expect to live longer than men for 99.5 percent of the world population, the empirical results show astonishing differences among countries in gender disparity in life expectancy around the globe.

Firstly, gender disparities in life expectancy analysed in Gaptimer Report No. 2 'How much longer live women than men around the globe?' uses the theoretical concept of time distance dimension of inequality. This provides two innovative generic statistical measures S-time-distance and S-time-step to complement (not replace) the existing mostly static measures of inequality in many fields. This is an additional dimension to assess the reality that disparities can be very persuasive and a long-standing phenomenon.

" 'As Sicherl (1973, 1993) proposes ... observed time distance is a dynamic measure of temporal disparity between the two series intuitively clear, readily measurable, and in transparent units. It is suggested that one should complement conventional measures with horizontal measures.'" (Granger and Jeon, 1997) C.W.J. Granger and Y. Jeon, University of California at San Diego

The time distance measure shows the reality with new eyes. The overall life expectancy the static difference between China and Sweden was less than 10 percent (which may appear to be small) while the S-time-distance was 51 years, (which gives a very different perception of the magnitude of the gap).

Potential users of this methodology and results are very many at various levels: international and national organizations, NGOs, experts, businesses, managers, educators, students, interest groups, media, and the general public.

Secondly, one of the main points in this study are astonishing differences between countries for gender inequality in life expectancy, which are confirmed by two methods: the respective world ranks and by very large time distances between the female and male trends of life expectancy. For example, Estonia occupied rank 51 the world for females and 110 for males. On the other extreme, e.g. the rank for Qatar was 65 for females and only 12 for males. For gender disparity in life expectancy S-time-distance for the world average, i.e. the horizontal time gap between trends of female and male life expectancy amounted to 20 years, 28 years for the EU27 and 35 years for the USA, showing a large and persistent gap in favour of women.

The time distance concept can influence the perception and decisions of people when they are assessing their relative position in their surroundings, in the society and across countries over time. For the EU27 average it is shown that the time delay for life expectancy of males behind females was large at about 27 years; the relationship is very persistent and it changes very slowly.

In the EU there are 10 countries with S-time-distance delay of male behind the female life expectancy more than 30 years, for five of them more than 50 years, i.e. more than half a century. The absolute difference in gender disparity in life expectancy for 269 EU27 NUTS2 regions ranged from 2.3 to 10.9 years of life, with a median value of 5.5 years; the same median value for 3118 US counties. More detailed regional results are prepared for the UK and Italy.

This is the first volume in a two-part publication which offers a comprehensive view of the topic. Volume I: Trade by Country, compiled in May 2014, presents detailed data of 175 countries (or areas) with data on imports and exports by commodity and trading partner provided for approximateky 90 countries (or areas), representing more than 70% of world trade in 2014. Volume II: Trade by Commodity, expected to be released at the end of the year, contains the detailed tables showing international trade for 258 commodities and eleven world trade tables covering trade values and indices up to the year 2014.

C.R.M.E. is a workbook for anyone needing (or wanting) to do a research project that can stand the test of claiming scientific significance. The workbook leads the reader in a logical progression from the measurement of variables in the research design to the formulation of testable hypotheses.

I taught such a research class at the college level for twenty years and learned how few people know the meaning of significance. Even students who came into the class having taken statistics as a pre-requisite were "fuzzy" about the concepts of standard deviations, significance, and standard scores. I realized there were two reasons for this: learning out of context; that is, without seeing an application, and secondly, being overloaded with too much statistics, which led to mere confusion. Thus my approach was to include the most common types of statistical tests covering a wide spectrum of measurements and having them applied in a real research project. Once this much is learned, it is easier to branch out to more sophisticated measurements and testing.

This workbook was also used with adult students in the university's weekend program. These were students from various large corporations in the city who were finishing their undergraduate degrees. It was they who gave me the idea to share the workbook, as many of them were given research projects to do at their place of employment and gave me very positive feedback. I genuinely hope that you find it helpful as well.

Best wishes, Prof. M.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Economic Geography, grade: 1,1, University of Marburg, language: English, abstract: Context: China's rapid economic development during the last decades and recent signs of a far reaching structural shift from an industrialized export oriented economy to an economy driven by innovation, domestic consumption and services is reflected by German investment patterns inside mainland China. While the bulk of German investments were traditionally focused on industrial production, a diverse set of market drivers led to an increased investment of German Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) as well. As a sector that has been rarely researched before, German KIBS in China are an integral part of the German business community, shaping their environment in various ways. Content: This thesis aims to fill a research gap by providing a baseline study and qualitative survey on the presence, business activity and structure of German KIBS in China, as well as the function of German KIBS in Beijing as "knowledge intermediaries." Theoretical considerations for this work are based on recent KIBS-research, outlining KIBS-functions and knowledge processing mechanisms, interaction patterns with partners and the relevance proximity. Furthermore, legal and economic framework conditions for foreign service companies in China are outlined, introducing Chinese government policies, regulations and current problems which affect the work of foreign companies in China. The subsequent empirical analysis consists of two parts: A qualitative baseline study with a focus on the overall situation of German KIBS in the context of Chinese service sector development and an empirical micro analysis based on interviews, which aims to provide more detailed insights on German KIBS operations with respect to: -Market entry -China specific regulations and challenges -External network relationships -Innovation, mediatio

Three kinds of people ought to read this book. Firstly there are those who use statistics in their work: accountants, scientists, advertisers, marketers, politicians and journalists. If you are in one of these categories I would like to help you to maintain, or aspire to, a reasonable standard of honesty and integrity, so that people can trust what you say, and so that you do not even inadvertently mislead yourself as well as others. Secondly there are cynics who think statistics can never be trusted and are just tools used by liars. I want to show that they can be used properly, and also that with a little thought, we can all learn to spot the false or exaggerated claims, the non-sequitors, and the unsubstantiated assumptions. Then we will be able to see the truth when it appears. Thirdly, there are the huge number of ordinary people who get totally confused and sometimes, sadly, misled, by statistics. I want to help you make sense of what you read or hear, and be able to be confident in sorting the facts from the hype. It is for this third group that this book is really written. If the other two groups benefit, I will be glad, but if you are in this group, please read on. I hope you will enjoy it, but above all I hope it will empower you.

In 2013, the World Bank Group adopted two new goals to guide its work: ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. More specifically, the goals are to reduce extreme poverty in the world to less than 3 percent by 2030, and to foster income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in each country. While poverty reduction has been a mainstay of the World Bank s mission for decades, the Bank has now set a specific goal and timetable, and for the first time, the Bank has explicitly included a goal linked to ensuring that growth is shared by all. The discussion until now has centered primarily on articulating the new goals. This report, the latest in World Bank s Policy Research Report series, goes beyond that and lays out their conceptual underpinnings, discusses their relative strengths and weaknesses by contrasting them with alternative indicators, and proposes empirical approaches and requirements to track progress towards the goals. The report makes clear that the challenges posed by the World Bank Group s new stance extend not just to the pursuit of these goals but, indeed, to their very definition and empirical content. The report also argues that an improved data infrastructure, consisting of many elements including the collection of more and better survey data, is critical to ensure that progress towards these goals can be measured, and policies to help achieve them can be identified and prioritized."

Diploma Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject Economics - Statistics and Methods, grade: 1, Bielefeld University, language: English, abstract: Ziel der Arbeit ist es den seit langem wissenschaftlich diskutierten Zusammenhang zwischen Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit, die Phillips-Kurve, mit Hilfe neuer statistischer Methoden zu untersuchen und seine verschiedenen Auspragungen bei den G7-Staaten miteinander zu vergleichen. Dabei werden zwei weitere Einflusse, Produktivitat und Inflationsklima, miteinbezogen. Der erste Teil fuhrt in die Diskussion der Phillips-Kurve ein. Im Folgenden werden die zur Analyse notwendigen Nichtparametrischen Verfahren vorgestellt und eingehend beschrieben. Die Analyse und der Vergleich der G7-Phillips-Kurven wird im vierten Kapitel durchgefuhrt. Im Anschluss daran folgt eine Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse und ein Ausblick.

In 1958 the Canadian Political Science Association established a committee to look into ways and means of improving statistical research in the social sciences in Canada. One of the ways in which the committee thought this could be done was by establishing an annual forum where papers could be presented and discussed. Eight papers given at the first Conference at Queen's University are contained in this volume. Diverse alike in subject and statistical method---as indeed a collection of papers reflecting the purpose of the founding committee is bound to be---the papers as printed incorporate the discussion that attended their presentation in 1960. The papers are: K.A.H. Buckley, "Historical Estimates of Internal Migration in Canada,"; Richard E. Du Wurs, Robert Batson, Margaret Daffron, "The 'Mass Society' and 'Community' Analyses of the Social Present"; P.J. Giffen, "Canadian Criminal Statistics"; E.J. Hanson, "The Post-war Rise of the Crude Petroleum Industry"; Gideon Rosenbluth, "Salaries of Engineers and Scientists, 1951"; David N. Solomon, Agnes M. Fergusson, "The Distribution and Functions of Canadian Engineers and Scientists"; K.W. Studnicki-Gizbert, "The Structure and Growth of the Canadian Air Transport Industry"; T.R. Vout, "The Canadian Manufacturing Industry, 1900-57."

The 2015 edition of this perennial favourite has been completely updated, revised and expanded with many new features. Full of facts and figures about the world today - on subjects as diverse as geography, population and demographics, business, finance and the economy, transport, tourism and the environment, society, culture and crime - it is a mine of fascinating data that will both inform and entertain. Where else would you discover that: - The G7 economies account for nearly 50% of the world's GDP but only 11% of its population - National income per head in Luxembourg is over $105,000; in Somalia it is $110 - Four of the world's five most liveable cities are in Australia; three of the top ten are in Canada - Combined, overseas Indians and Chinese send close to $110 billion home a year - More than 48% of American women are obese - Honduras and El Salvador have the highest mortality rates - America is the biggest arms exporter, India the biggest arms importer With rankings on more than 200 topics, data on more than 190 countries, detailed profiles of more than 65 of the world's major economies and special profiles on the Euro zone and the world. The Pocket World in Figures is always eagerly awaited by its many thousands of fans. Noone who wants to be well-informed can afford to be without this new edition.

The document focuses on the importance of studying Bayesian approach so as to analyze the impact of foreign direct investment on macroeconomics of the Yemen Republic. In probability theory and statistics, Bayes' theorem (alternatively Bayes' law) is a theorem with two distinct interpretations. In the Bayesian interpretation, it expresses how a subjective degree of belief should rationally change to account for evidence. In the frequentist interpretation, it relates inverse representations of the probabilities concerning two events. In the Bayesian interpretation, Bayes' theorem is fundamental to Bayesian statistics, and has applications in fields including science, engineering, economics (particularly microeconomics), game theory, medicine and law. The application of Bayes' theorem to update beliefs is called Bayesian inference.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2000 in the subject Business economics - Didactics, Economic Pedagogy, grade: 1, -, language: English, abstract: Writers on management and organisational excellence today provide a set of prescriptions which they argue will lead to healthy, well functioning firms. Within the management sciences there has been a growing tendency to view organisations as complex systems, that is, to describe them as organisms. Increasingly the hard sciences are being used to describe and analyse organisations. In the field of creative problem solving several systems authors have advocated the use of metaphors to describe certain aspects of organisations. In reviewing much of today's management literature we are exhorted to use benchmarks, for a variety of management tasks. In reviewing organisational excellence we are duty bound to find a measure that will be relevant tomorrow as well as today. Conjoining these current themes in management, this thesis seeks to review what we know about the effective collective functioning of selected species and to compare these natural systems with organisational systems. We posit the question: Can an understanding of the functioning of natural systems help us to understand how organisations function. If so, what can we learn about the effective functioning of organisations. Firstly we will review common management theories, with a focus on organisational learning and knowledge management. Secondly we will look at three natural organisations: Honey bees, leaf-cutter ants and the African locust. We want to find out how these organisations function, and specifically search for knowledge management and organisational learning within these biological systems. Then we will try to link management theories with our findings in natural organisations. This approach will finally deliver some interesting hypothesis about knowledge management and organisational learning - both valid for human and natural organisations.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Economic Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut fur Humangeographie), course: Mobilitat 2.0 - Soziale Veranderungen und Zukunft der Mobilitat, language: English, abstract: In an era of information and communication technologies, imaginative and virtual travel have not substituted physical travel but resulted in a network society of multiple mobilities. People are increasingly mobile for maintaining their professional and private social relationships in intermittent face-to-face meetings. So far, we do not know much about the interrelation between travel mobility and social network services (SNSs). With the example of Facebook as the dominating, undisputed SNS of 845 million monthly active users, I will argue how 'place'-focused features are put under the spotlight of Facebook users' activities and perceived character. As a platform combining various services, tools, and applications also of third parties, Facebook can influence its users' mobility habits and expectations of physical traveling. This brings with it important implications for research and practice, since foremostly young generations are concerned and will thus influence future developments.

Interest in the skew-normal and related families of distributions has grown enormously over recent years, as theory has advanced, challenges of data have grown, and computational tools have made substantial progress. This comprehensive treatment, blending theory and practice, will be the standard resource for statisticians and applied researchers. Assuming only basic knowledge of (non-measure-theoretic) probability and statistical inference, the book is accessible to the wide range of researchers who use statistical modelling techniques. Guiding readers through the main concepts and results, it covers both the probability and the statistics sides of the subject, in the univariate and multivariate settings. The theoretical development is complemented by numerous illustrations and applications to a range of fields including quantitative finance, medical statistics, environmental risk studies, and industrial and business efficiency. The author's freely available R package sn, available from CRAN, equips readers to put the methods into action with their own data.

Distribution analysis has advanced remarkably in recent years, and this is a valuable application of its principles to a Canadian context. The book provides an extensive survey of recent literature and a new source of income and wealth distribution data for Ontario, drawn from newly available microdata sets. It also presents an evaluation of the data as a basis for measuring inequality in the distribution of economic and well-being. The empirical results illustrate how incomes vary significantly with age according to labour market attachment and experience, educational attainment and occupation, transfer receipts, and investment benefits. Similarly, strong age effects on net worth account reflect life-cycle patterns in asset holdings and debts typically associated with family investment in housing and financial adjustments for retirement. Differences in family size and composition have a substantial effect on the structure of family economic well-being. The inequality effects of adjusting for accrued capital gains and net worth holdings can also be quite significant. It is found that the distributional effects of CPP net benefits are considerable, although they are not as equalizing as one may have expected because of marked cohort effects. The detailed findings suggest that the life-cycle framework is a very useful one for evaluating the distributional effects of certain government programs, particularly intertemporal ones, and they underline the need for a range of different types of policies to address low income problems. The study urges greater recognition of the inequality of treatment and opportunity among different groups of the population. It also points out that conventional income distribution figures are only very imperfect estimates of the state of inequality in the underlying distribution of economic well-being.

From reviews of previous editions

"The State of Working America remains unrivaled as the most-trusted source for a comprehensive understanding of how working Americans and their families are faring in today's economy." Robert B. Reich

"It is the inequality of wealth, argue the authors, rather than new technology (as some would have it), that is responsible for the failure of America's workplace to keep pace with the country's economic growth. The State of Working America is a well-written, soundly argued, and important reference book." Library Journal

"An indispensable work on family income, wages, taxes, employment, and the distribution of wealth. New York Review of Books

Since 1988, The State of Working America has provided a comprehensive answer to a question newly in vogue in this age of Occupy Wall Street: To what extent has overall economic growth translated into rising living standards for the vast majority of American workers and their families? In the 12th edition, Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz analyze a trove of data on income, jobs, mobility, poverty, wages, and wealth to demonstrate that rising economic inequality over the past three decades has decoupled overall economic growth from growth in the living standards of the vast majority.

The new edition of The State of Working America also expands on this analysis of American living standards, most notably by placing the Great Recession in historical context. The severe economic downturn that began in December 2007 came on the heels of a historically weak recovery following the 2001 recession, a recovery that saw many measures of living standards stagnate. The authors view the past decade as lost in terms of living standards growth, and warn that millions of American households face another decade of lost opportunity.

Especially troubling, the authors stress, is that while overall economic performance in the decades before the Great Recession was more than sufficient to broadly raise living standards, broad-based growth was blocked by rising inequality driven largely by policy choices. A determinedly data-driven narrative, The State of Working America remains the most comprehensive resource about the economic experience of working Americans."

Il libro nasce dall esigenza di coniugare esperienze e capacita procedurali diverse provenienti da vari ambiti disciplinari, quali l informatica e la statistica, al fine di ricercare ed individuare percorsi e relazioni legate alla conoscenza. In un contesto di business, la conoscenza scoperta puo avere un valore strategico per le aziende perche consente di aumentare i profitti, riducendo i costi oppure aumentando le entrate con il conseguente aumento del ROI. Il volume e rivolto sia a studenti universitari e ricercatori, che a professionisti e manager aziendali che vogliano approfondire gli aspetti algoritmici delle tecniche di Data mining: lo studio degli algoritmi e delle principali tecniche e essenziale per conoscere meglio come la tecnologia possa essere applicata ai diversi tipi di dati e quindi anche diverse problematiche di business. Il testo pone volutamente l attenzione sugli aspetti procedurali e di calcolo della metodologia, differenziandosi dagli altri testi in italiano che inquadrano puramente il contesto statistico. Il materiale esposto puo essere utile a quanti vogliano completare la loro formazione scientifica in questa disciplina. "

Diploma Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Economics - Statistics and Methods, grade: 1,3, University of Tubingen, language: English, comment: empirische Arbeit, abstract: Rating agencies play an important role on the capital markets; however, during the financial crisis 2007-2009 people began to question how good their assessments of credit quality really are. In my study, I empirically examine the effect of rating announcements from Standard & Poor's on the Credit Default Swap (CDS) Market. It contributes to the field of rating agencies' performance measurement. Based on Event Study Methodology and recent CDS data, I detect virtually no significant abnormal spread change at the announcement date neither for downgrades nor upgrades. However, the CDS show some anticipation prior to the event especially for downgradings. Considering the rating date, I find evidence for an asymmetric reaction where downgrades cause stronger movement in the spreads. As a result, it seems as if rating changes do not convey a great part of new information to the markets. At the same time, the significant anticipation indicates that the CDS market processes information more efficiently.

This is a textbook designed for undergraduate and graduate students and is the result of the author's more than twenty years of involvement with econometrics as both teacher and researcher. It contains theory, problems and answers, many of which have already been tested extensively in classrooms and tutorials and then refined for the book. It includes the following topics: Single equation regressions Dummy and limited dependent variable models Simultaneous equations models Dynamic regression models Unit roots Cointegration and error correction models ggregation over time issues Forecasting and panel data models The book does not attempt to duplicate the many standard econometrics books. Rather, it supplements them by focusing exclusively on theoretical and empirical exercises in a systematic way. Although much of the material has a Caribbean flavour, its rigorous and clear presentation will appeal to students and teachers worldwide.