1,721,016 research outputs found
ASKING CONSUMPTION QUESTIONS IN GENERAL PURPOSE SURVEYS
In many research areas it is desirable to have information on household total expenditure ('consumption'). We draw evidence from several sources on the usefulness of recall consumption questions. We conclude that valid information can be collected by adding specific recall questions to general purpose surveys, and provide recommendations on how to do so
Late starters or excluded generations? A cohort analysis of catch up in homeownership in England
England has very volatile house prices. Using survey data spanning multiple house-price cycles over nearly forty years, we document the association between house prices and homeownership at age thirty. We then use synthetic cohort methods to assess whether differences in early ownership rates persist in later life. We find that ownership rates at age thirty have varied substantially, with a significant negative association with prices. Measurement error problems – attenuation and other biases - complicate an analysis of the persistence of these differences in ownership. We use two methods to deal with this. Both indicate that cohorts with low ownership rates at age thirty close about 80% of the ownership gap by age forty
Value added tax
VAT is an important source of government revenue, forecast to raise £82.6 billion or 16% of total tax receipts in 2008–09. Like taxes on earnings, VAT distorts the choice between leisure and consumption. Because VAT is applied at different rates to different goods and services, it also distorts people’s spending decisions and firms’ production decisions. In its current form, it is mildly progressive, not regressive as some commentators suggest.
The temporary cut in the standard VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% is a better stimulus measure than its critics suggest. We estimate that the VAT cut will reduce prices on average by 1.2%. Past experience suggests this may lead people to buy 1.2% more goods and services. Those dismissing it as a failure ignore the likelihood that things would have been even worse without it.
The government considered an increase in the rate of VAT to 18.5% in 2011–12. This would have acted as a stimulus to expenditure before that date, as well as raising about £5 billion per year thereafter. Whilst, on its own, such a change would be less progressive than further increases in National Insurance, it would be possible to compensate most poorer households.
Broadening the VAT base by extending the standard rate to most goods and services would remove many of the distortions to consumption decisions caused by the current system and would raise significant revenue even after more than compensating poorer households on average. For instance, a net £10 billion could be raised, with the rest of the revenues used to help meet the child poverty targets and compensate poorer households, households with children, those with disabilities and pensioners
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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