LOGNORMAL EXTRAPOLATION AND INCOME ESTIMATION FOR POOR BLACK FAMILIES*

ABSTRACT. In studies of urban and state income distribution, the estimation of percentile incomes within intervals reported by the Bureau of the Census has often been done under the assumption that incomes are uniformly distributed. This paper shows that income may be significantly underestimated if the assumption is applied to lower-level percentiles in the black family income distribution. Consequently, conclusions about the level and determinants of the relative income of poor black families may be misleading.     

EVOLUTION OF URBAN SYSTEMS IN THE PARETO PLANE*

ABSTRACT Distributions of city sizes are usually characterized by their Pareto index. This, however, turns out to be a rather restrictive view, for the Pareto distribution is known to become singular whenever the Pareto index becomes smaller than one, a case which is fairly frequent in empirical distributions. We show that the introduction of finite Pareto distributions in which city sizes are bounded from above solves a number of difficulties encountered by the rank-size rule and by the unbounded Pareto distribution. Combined with the use of finite Pareto distributions, the green-belt model that has been introduced previously is reexamined. It implies definite constraints for the long-run evolution of urban systems; it is in the cases of countries experiencing a process of fast urbanization that these constraints are of greatest significance. The implications of the model are confronted with empirical evidence concerning the evolution of urban systems in major industrialized countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF URBAN AREAS: TESTING FOR THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE PARETO DISTRIBUTION USING A GENERALIZED BOX-COX TRANSFORMATION FUNCTION*

ABSTRACT A widely held opinion among urban economists and geographers is that the Pareto distribution is an accurate representation of the urban size distribution of many countries around the world. This paper focuses attention on the appropriateness of the procedures used in the literature in arriving at this conclusion. We employed the generalized Box-Cox transformation function, which permits estimation of many functional forms for testing the Pareto distribution as special cases. The results obtained are illuminating albeit somewhat surprising. Except for one country the Pareto distribution is overwhelmingly rejected in favor of the general Box-Cox function. In more than 30 percent of all countries this form collapses to a reciprocal function. Moreover, as far as the overall goodness of fit is concerned, our results show that the General Box-Cox function is superior to the Pareto form.     

ON STATISTICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CERAMIC ARTEFACTS USING GEOCHEMICAL AND PETROGRAPHIC DATA*

The scientific analysis of ceramics often has the aim of identifying groups of similar artefacts. Much published work focuses on analysis of data derived from geochemical or mineralogical techniques. The former is more likely to be subjected to quantitative statistical analysis. This paper examines some approaches to the statistical analysis of data arising from both kinds of techniques, including ‘mixed‐mode’ methods where both types of data are incorporated into analysis. The approaches are illustrated using data derived from 88 Late Bronze Age transport jars from Kommos, Crete. Results suggest that the mixed‐mode approach can provide additional insight into the data.     

UNCERTAIN INCOME AND HOUSING PRICE AND LOCATION CHOICE*

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we adapt recent developments in uncertainty modeling to the location choice paradigm. In particular, we analyze the impact of income and housing price uncertainty on housing demand and location demand characteristics in a partial equilibrium framework. We begin by recognizing that housing consumption cannot readily be altered in response to changes in income and price. We find that income and house price risk affect housing and location demands in different ways. Additionally, the spatial characteristics of price risk also affect consumer housing and location demands. For example, if housing price risk is lower farther from the central city, housing demand can be greater in those locations even with the higher transportation cost. Thus, over some locations, the expected price gradient could be positive.     

A SIMPLE METHOD FOR ESTIMATING QUARTERLY LOCAL-AREA PERSONAL INCOME*

ABSTRACT A single-equation econometric approach is developed for estimating personal income on a quarterly basis for counties and county aggregates (e.g., metropolitan areas). An experiment is conducted on state data to test the accuracy of the estimates. The experiment indicates that they would be highly accurate for large local areas; for local areas comprising at least 20 percent of their state's total personal income, the estimates would fall within 2 percent of BEA-type estimates 95 percent of the time. An aggregate estimation approach is shown to be preferable to a component approach. Using data on local department store sales, the quarterly personal income estimates are shown to forecast better than the currently available annual estimates.     

DATING ARCHAEOMETALLURGICAL SLAGS USING THERMOLUMINESCENCE*

Thermoluminescence has a great potential for dating archaeometallurgical slags, because the smelting process leads to a well‐defined resetting of the ‘luminescence clock’. However, the complex compositions of slags have unpleasant consequences for TL measurements if the bulk slag substance is used. To overcome this problem, quartz has been separated out of slag matrices by chemical and physical procedures. The TL measurements were carried out on this defined mineral phase. This method was tested with seven slag samples from different locations and ages. In most cases, the TL ages determined show good agreement with reference data.     

A NOTE ON INCOME TAXES AND DEGREE ONE PRODUCTION HOMOGENEITY*

ABSTRACT In a recent JRS article [Martinich and Hurter (1985)] we examined the production and spatial impact on a firm operating in an uncertain environment due to the imposition of a flat rate income tax. The impacts were shown to depend on the properties of the firm's production and preference functions. In this paper we develop further results for the case where the firm has a degree one homogeneous production function. It is shown that an income tax is technologically and spatially neutral for any risk-averse firm, without regard to any other properties of the preference function. Thus, we not only extend our earlier results for the degree one homogenous production function case but we also correct an error related to this case in the earlier paper.     

DELINEATING METROPOLITAN AREAS USING LAND PRICES*

ABSTRACT This paper proposes an approach to delineating metropolitan areas that is more general than the standard approaches in three respects: First, it uses the fraction of land prices attributable to economies of urban agglomeration instead of using commuting intensities as an indicator of economic integration between metropolitan centers and their hinterlands. Second, it identifies metropolitan centers endogenously instead of determining them exogenously. And third, it takes metropolitan subcenters explicitly into account. An empirical illustration is used to show that the approach tends to delineate fewer but larger metropolitan areas in densely populated regions, and smaller metropolitan areas in sparsely populated regions.     

DETECTING MULTIVARIATE OUTLIERS IN ARTEFACT COMPOSITIONAL DATA*

Multivariate statistical analysis of artefact compositional data, usually undertaken to investigate structure in the data, often incidentally reveals the presence of multivariate outliers. Much statistical methodology dealing with the detection of such outliers is not well suited to archaeometric data that, in the event, consist of two or more groups. The paper provides examples to illustrate the importance of detecting and dealing with outliers, and critically examines a range of different approaches to outlier detection. The examples show that cluster analysis, the technique most widely used for this purpose, can fail to reveal outliers clearly identified by other methods.