Sudhanshu K Mishra

• MA (Bhagalpur), MRP (IIT, KGP), PhD(IIT, KGP)
• Professor at North Eastern Hill University

This paper introduces a new kind of method to fit a line to the observed data. It uses the median (instead of mean) in the Wald's method of fitting lines to the data and demonstrates that when errors are misbehaved (like in Cauchy distribution) or skewed (like in Levy distribution), the proposed method outperforms the Ordinary Least Squares method...

This short paper is a note on the location measures such as the median. Usually, the median is defined in terms of the variate values, but here we obtain the median as a function of the arithmetic mean of the index values. This approach immediately enables us to define other measures on the power mean of index values of which harmonic, geometric an...

Many optimization problems in science and engineering are highly nonlinear, and thus require sophisticated optimization techniques to solve. Traditional techniques such as gradient-based algorithms are mostly local search methods, and often struggle to cope with such challenging optimization problems. Recent trends tend to use nature-inspired optim...

This study builds a simultaneous equation model that establishes interconnections among the measures of globalization, measures of democracy, human development, corruption perception index and per capita income, which in turn jointly influence social progress. The model has eleven equations in which the response variables and the predictor variable...

In this study we build a simultaneous equation model in which the measures of different aspects of globalization (attributable to KOF) and different aspects of democracy (attributable to EIU) are related in seven structural equations. A bi-directional relationship between democracy and globalization is visualized. The model is estimated by the conv...

This study builds a simultaneous equation model that establishes interconnections among the measures of globalization, measures of democracy, human development, corruption perception index and per capita income, which in turn jointly influence social progress. The model has eleven equations in which the response variables and the predictor variable...

Narmadeshwar Jha was an economist in India who specialized on the economics of Alfred Marshall. Jha passed his MA from Patna University and did his Ph.D. in the University of Leeds, UK. He wrote his well-known book titled ‚The Age of Marshall: Aspects of British Economic Thought, 1890-1915‛. This paper makes an attempt to investigate the academic i...

The Two-Stage Least squares method for obtaining the estimated structural coefficients of a simultaneous linear equations model is a celebrated method that uses OLS at the first stage for estimating the reduced form coefficients and obtaining the expected values in the arrays of current exogenous variables. At the second stage it uses OLS, equation...

This study is concerned with a great socio-economic experiment in history that replaced the naturally evolved market economy with the humanly designed command economy to achieve a socialist triumph over capitalism, experienced a setback and ultimately returned to the market economy for managing the material aspects of the society. Efforts to open t...

The present study proposes an alternative method to construct an index of globalization which is based on the principle of almost equi-marginal contributions (AEMC) or Shapley values of the constituent variables to the overall index rather than the correlation coefficients among the constituent variables and the overall index (the KOF index based o...

In this study, we have constructed a composite index of globalization of select Asian countries during 1970-2014 by minimizing the Euclidean norm of Shapley values of indicator variables contributing to the overall index. As a consequence, the mean expected marginal contributions of constituent variables to the overall index are approximately equal...

This paper proposes a method to construct composite index, which is a linear combination of several variables, by deriving weights on the criterion of Shapley value (from cooperative game theory) that a constituent variable has in making the composite index. In practice it is found oftentimes that the most common method of principal component analy...

This paper presents the essential concepts and application to optimize the parameters of an erosion model using data collected in an experimental basin located in northeastern Brazil, with a global optimization method known as Host Parasite Co-evolutionary (HPC) which is suitable for solving optimization problems of large scales and offers wider ch...

This paper aims at locating the practice of micro-credit system into a larger theoretical canvas of economic theory and philosophy. A systems theoretic approach has been adopted. Emergence of the 'excluded' class has been explained with the help of the theory of feedback. Individuals have been assumed to be myopic, local optimizer and bounded ratio...

Social sector with the objective to satisfy the welfare needs of the people and to correct the imbalances in the economy claims a sizeable proportion of the public expenditure and has emerged as a significant sector. This paper in this regard is a state level analysis on the growth of public expenditure vis-à-vis status of social sector in India us...

This note provides some examples of plant leaves whose outline maps exhibit Poincaré recurrence and mixing while subjected to repeated Anosov diffeomorphic transformation. The datasets and a computer program (Fortran 77) have also been given. Keywords: Plant leaf shape, Deformed ellipse, Anosov diffeomorphism, Poincaré recurrence, Chaos, Mixing....

Based on a three-parameter molecular orbital-type pair-potential function, we have proposed a generalized interatomic pair-potential function. This new function has been demonstrated to be able to describe accurately and adequately the potentials of the metastable diatomic dications (e.g., He2++ , BeH++, AlH++), and the ground states of covalent bo...

The Brownian correlation has been recently introduced by Székely et al. (2007; 2009), which has an attractive property that when it is zero, it guarantees independence. This paper investigates into the effects and advantages, if any, of replacement of the Pearsonian coefficient of correlation (r) by the Brownian coefficient of correlation (say, ρ),...

A three-parameter pair-potential model recently constructed is improved in the short- and long-range interaction regions. We demonstrate that this improved potential function is able to accurately describe the entire potentials of the ground-state van der Waals systems such as rare-gas, triplet H2, Alkali-helium, Alkaline-earth, and group 12 diatom...

This paper aims at locating the practice of micro-credit system into a larger theoretical canvas of economic theory and philosophy. A systems theoretic approach has been adopted. Emergence of the ‘excluded’ class has been explained with the help of the theory of feedback. Individuals have been assumed to be myopic, local optimizer and bounded ratio...

The paper introduces some unexplored issues relating to computation and interpretation of median and arithmetic mean. It has been shown that both arithmetic mean (AM) and median may be obtained by using the weight systems that are non-conventional and they may be obtained by an exercise in optimization. It also shows that the formulation for obtain...

Meghalaya, the abode of clouds, is one of the smallest states in India having a geographical area of 22,429 sq km along with a forest cover of 9,496 km². The state is endowed with gift of nature such as lofty mountain ranges with interplay of lush green valley, cascading rivers, sprawling water bodies, waterfalls, caves, and living root bridges. No...

The paper is an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of Pena's DP-2 method over a host of methods used to make composite indices. To undertake this exercise, variables and data used and methodology adopted in Human Development Report 2011 are employed along with nine other methodologies employed by other scholars. Although there is no agreed principl...

This paper proposes a novel method of global optimization based on host-parasite co-evolution. It also develops a Fortran-77 code for the algorithm. The algorithm has been tested on 100 benchmark functions (of which the results of 32 relatively harder problems have been reported). In its search ability, the proposed method is comparable to the Diff...

This note is intended to demonstrate that median (a well-known measure of central tendency) is a weighted arithmetic mean of all sample observations and such (non-trivial) weights may be computed by an optimization method such as the host-parasite co-evolutionary algorithm.

This paper aims to calibrate a physically-based, event-oriented runoff-erosion model by means of a global optimization method known as cuckoo-host co-evolution (CHC) which has co-evolutionary changes incorporated into the traditional cuckoo search algorithm. The physically-based erosion model that was chosen to be optimized here is the watershed er...

This paper constructs composite indices of globalization of 131 countries spread over the five continents and classified into World-I, World-II and World-III countries. KOF, the Business Cycle Research Institute in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich is the source of data used in this study. The Composite Indices of Globalization have...

This paper proposes a novel method of global optimization based on cuckoo-host co-evaluation. It also develops a Fortran-77 code for the algorithm. The algorithm has been tested on 96 benchmark functions (of which the results of 30 relatively harder problems have been reported). The proposed method is comparable to the Differential Evolution method...

The present study devises a computational scheme (and develops a FORTRAN 77 computer program) that may be appropriate to construct Pena’s DP2 (ordinal) synthetic indicator (Z) from the partial indicators (X) all of which are ordinal (ranking scores). An attempt has also been made to empirically apply the method (and the computer program) to obtain...

Using the KOF data at the annual level, we construct ten different composite indices for comparing the extent of globalization of 131 countries for eleven years, 1999-2009. We compare the different indices of globalization among themselves and also with the Dreher-KOF index of globalization and find that among the different indices the Dreher-Cheby...

This paper uses mixed combinatorial-cum-real particle swarm method to obtain a heuristically optimal order in which the constituent variables can be arranged so as to yield some generalized maximum entropy synthetic indicators that represent the constituent variables in the best information-theoretic sense. It may help resolve the arbitrariness and...

Pena’s method of construction of a synthetic indicator is very sensitive to the order in which the constituent variables (whose linear aggregation yields the synthetic indicator) are arranged. Due to this, Pena’s method can at present give only an arbitrary synthetic indicator whose representativeness is indeterminate and uncertain, especially when...

In this paper we demonstrate that Pena’s method of construction of a synthetic indicator is very sensitive to the order in which the constituent variables (whose linear aggregation yields the synthetic indicator) are arranged. Since m number of constituent variables may be arranged in m-factorial ways, even a moderately large m can give rise to a v...

In this application-based study, the influence of the catchment discretization on the optimization of runoff-erosion modeling using a particle swarm optimization to a physically-based erosion model named WESP (Watershed Erosion Simulation Program) is conducted. This study is carried in the semiarid region of Brazil, more precisely in a micro-catchm...

A major risk concerning the modelling of hydrological processes with conceptual models is the optimization of the parameters because they cannot be directly measured in the field, mainly in nonlinear models. Several optimization methods have been tested in the past during the calibration of such models, but it is difficult to ensure that the final...

Statistical distribution of Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is characteristically asymmetric and non-mesokurtic. Even the distribution of log10(JIF) exhibits conspicuous skewness and non-mesokurticity. In this paper we estimate the parameters of Johnson SU distribution fitting to the log10(JIF) data for 8 years, 2001 through 2008, and study the tempora...

The data on JIFs provided by Thomson Scientific can only be considered as a sample since they do not cover the entire universe of those documents that cite an intellectual output (paper, article, etc) or are cited by others. Then, questions arise if the empirical distribution (best fit to the JIF data for any particular year) really represents the...

What type of statistical distribution do the Journal Impact Factors follow? In the past, researchers have hypothesized various types of statistical distributions underlying the generation mechanism of journal impact factors. These are: lognormal, normal, approximately normal, Weibull, negative exponential, combination of exponentials, Poisson, Gene...

There is now abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably. The environment is gradually becoming more overstressed. People now are transforming ecosystems throughout the world at a faster and more extensive pace than any other time in human history. We are culturally given to the wasteful use of resources. In this milieu, this...

This paper introduces the problem of global optimization of the complicated multimodal nonlinear objective functions by stochastic population-based methods, such as Genetic algorithms, classical and generalized simulated annealing (GSA), and differential evolution (DE) in general, and the particle swarm (PS) method in particular. It illustrates how...

Application of a particle swarm optimization to a physically-based erosion model. The diffi culties involved in calibration of physically based erosion models have been partly attributable to the lack of robust optimization tools. This paper presents the essential concepts and application to optimize channel and plane parameters in an erosion model...

Application of a particle swarm opti-mization to a physically-based erosion model. The diffi culties involved in calibration of physically based erosion models have been partly attributable to the lack of robust optimization tools. This paper presents the essential concepts and application to optimize channel and plane parameters in an ero-sion mod...

A lie is an expression at deviance with the truth known or honestly believed by someone with an intention to deceive others for certain purpose, social or personal. An ability to lie might be evolutionary in nature possibly to help in survival, since it is found in the non-human world also. In the biological perspective, each individual is at war a...

Ever-increasing population and ever-proliferating demand for variety and choice together with a marked preference in favor of deliberate under-utilization of resources as well as deprecation of thrift have exposed the available reserves of natural resources to the danger of depletion. The culture based on the market economy has made the people conc...

Is journal impact factor a good measure of research merit? This question has assumed a great importance after the notification of the University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2...

After the notification of the University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2009 on September 23rd 2009, publication of research papers/articles in reputed journals has become an im...

Structural change which is inherent in an evolving economy refers to a long-term widespread transformation of the fundamental relationships among different parts and organic constituents of it, rather than micro scale or short-term change in output and employment. Short-term economic challenges that are managed with fiscal or monetary policies do n...

The classical canonical correlation analysis is extremely greedy to maximize the squared correlation between two sets of variables. As a result, if one of the variables in the dataset-1 is very highly correlated with another variable in the dataset-2, the canonical correlation will be very high irrespective of the correlation among the rest of the...

In this paper we have proposed a method to conduct the ordinal canonical correlation analysis (OCCA) that yields ordinal canonical variates and the coefficient of correlation between them, which is analogous to (and a generalization of) the rank correlation coefficient of Spearman. The ordinal canonical variates are themselves analogous to the cano...

Rank-ordering of individuals or objects on multiple criteria has many important practical applications. A reasonably representative composite rank ordering of multi-attribute objects/individuals or multi-dimensional points is often obtained by the Principal Component Analysis, although much inferior but computationally convenient methods also are f...

This paper presents the findings from a study of the structural relationship between household income and consumption expenditure in the township of Kohima. It is based on the primary data collected from 209 households inhabiting 19 wards of the township. The paper investigates into the relationships between income and expenditure on different item...

The Pearsonian coefficient of correlation as a measure of association between two variates is highly prone to the deleterious effects of outlier observations (in data). Statisticians have proposed a number of formulas to obtain robust measures of correlation that are considered to be less affected by errors of observation, perturbation or presence...

This paper investigates into the factors responsible for variations in participation of economists of different countries in academic and professional activities reflected in their intellectual output. It is based on the data published by the Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS) for August 2008. It is observed that economists of s...

This study has presented data relating to human development in Nagaland and made an attempt to observe regularities in the same that may be meaningful for devising development policies. The findings indicate that per capita income, human development index and gender-related development index are only poorly correlated with the health indicators suc...

In this paper we construct thirteen different types of composite indices by linear combination of indicator variables (with and without outliers/data corruption). Weights of different indicator variables are obtained by maximization of the sum of squared (and, alternatively, absolute) correlation coefficients of the composite indices with the const...

Quality of higher education is a multi-dimensional concept. It lies in effectiveness of transmitting knowledge and skill; the authenticity, content, coverage and depth of information; availability of reading/teaching materials; help in removing obstacles to learning; applicability of knowledge in solving the real life problems; fruitfulness of know...

The economic and environmental benefits of the extensive biodiversity-rich forest areas of Northeast India are immense and are depended upon by the people for their livelihoods. However, for historical, topographical, logistic and complex sociological reasons, quantitative data on most of the economic and environmental components of forests are lac...

In the extant literature a suggestion has been made to solve the nearest correlation matrix problem by a modified von Neumann approximation. In this paper it has been shown that obtaining the nearest positive semi-definite matrix of a given negative definite correlation matrix by such method is either infeasible or suboptimal. First, if a given mat...

This paper has elaborated upon the deleterious effects of outliers and corruption of dataset on estimation of linear regression coefficients by the Ordinary Least Squares method. Motivated to ameliorate the estimation procedure, it introduces the robust regression estimators based on Campbell's robust covariance estimation method. It investigates i...

Based on the bibliographical data available with the RePEc (Research Papers in Economics), the Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS) publishes every month the up-dated academic rankings of different geographic regions (countries/states in the US). This paper raises the question whether the method used by the IDEAS/RePEc to obtain a...

This paper demonstrates that if we intend to optimally rank order n objects (candidates) each of which has m attributes or rank scores awarded by m evaluators, then the ordinal ranking of objects by the conventional principal component based factor scores turns out to be suboptimal. Three numerical examples have been provided to show that principal...

The Two�Stage Least Squares (2�SLS) is a well known econometric technique used to estimate the parameters of a multi�equation econometric model when errors across the equations are not correlated and the equation(s) concerned is (are) over�identified or exactly identified. However, in presence of outliers in the data matrix, the classical 2...

The research agendas of psychologists and economists now have several overlaps, with behavioural economics providing theoretical and experimental study of the relationship between behaviour and choice, and hedonic psychology discussing appropriate measures of outcomes of choice in terms of overall utility or life satisfaction. Here we model the rel...

This paper systematically presents the geographical and historical forces that have shaped the resource base, infrastructure, connectivity, socio-economic milieu and consequently the economy of Tripura determining the level of human development in the state. In spite of a great burden of population on its fragile economy, the state has secured an a...

This essay portrays the major currents in recent economic thinking against the orthodoxy and dogmatism of neoclassical economics. It places behavioral economics, experimental economics, evolutionary economics, ecological economics, new institutional economics, agent-based computational economics and post-autistic economics vis-�-vis the classical a...

Professor Narmadeshwar Jha was a noted scholar on History of Economic Thought that took its shape under the influence of Alfred Marshall. His widely referred book - The Age of Marshall: Aspects of British Economic Thought, 1890-1915 – was written under the supervision of Professor A.J. Brown of Leeds (UK) and published with a commendatory foreword...

Effects of outliers on mean, standard deviation and Pearson’s correlation coefficient are well known. The Principal Components analysis uses Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficients to construct composite indices from indicator variables and hence may be very sensitive to effects of outliers in data. Median, mean deviation and Bradley’s co...

The Two-Stage Least Squares (2-SLS) is a well known econometric technique used to estimate the parameters of a multi-equation (or simultaneous equations) econometric model when errors across the equations are not correlated and the equation(s) concerned is (are) over-identified or exactly identified. However, in presence of outliers in the data mat...

The research agendas of psychologists and economists now have several overlaps, with behavioural economics providing theoretical and experimental study of the relationship between behaviour and choice, and hedonic psychology discussing appropriate measures of outcomes of choice in terms of overall utility or life satisfaction. Here we model the rel...

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The Village and Small Enterprise (VSE) sector not only has tremendous potential of development in the North Eastern Region (NER) of India, but also suits most to this region’s natural endowment, human resources and sociological conditions. This sector also provides a great scope for women empowerment and thus reduction in gender-based inequalities...

Most of the studies relating to estimation of joint production functions have noted two difficulties: first that allocation of inputs to different outputs is not known, and the second that a method of estimation cannot have more than one dependent variable, which necessitates construction of a composite output transformation function. This study ha...

This paper gives an outline of evolution of the concept and econometrics of production function, which was one of the central apparatus of neoclassical economics. It shows how the famous Cobb-Douglas production function was indeed invented by von Thünen and Wicksell, how the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function was formulat...

This essay draws attention to the fundamental axioms of human nature which the socio-economic policies of India bank upon and analyses why in spite of elaborate planning for development well over a span of fifty years the core economy of the country remains unchanged with widespread poverty, poor wage rates, child labour and hunger.

Subjugation of women in certain spheres of life is very common in the patriarchal societies and it has a long history. In India, women have little social or economic independence. They are treated inequitably at home as much as at the workplace outside. Perhaps, it is so for the Indian society is predominantly patriarchal. However, Meghlaya, a stat...

Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index obtained by a weighted aggregation of other three indices, each measuring one aspect, namely life expectancy, education and real per capita income. Intra-country equality in income distribution, however, is very important with regard to quality of life and, thus, human development. This paper is co...

Construction of (composite) indices by the PCA is very common, but this method has a preference for highly correlated variables to the poorly correlated variables in the data set. However, poor correlation does not entail the marginal importance, since correlation coefficients among the variables depend, apart from their linearity, also on their sc...

The issue of inequality or imbalance in sectional, sectoral or regional distribution of economic and social variables is connected to welfare implications of the functioning of an economy responsible for allocation of resources, and production, distribution and consumption of the material requisites of well-being. Economic development and technolog...

Keane’s bump function is considered as a standard benchmark for nonlinear constrained optimization. It is highly multi-modal and its optimum is located at the non-linear constrained boundary. The true minimum of this function is, perhaps, unknown. We intend in this paper to optimize Keane’s function of different dimensions (2 to 100) by the Repulsi...

Zellner and Revankar in their paper “Generalized Production Functions†introduced a production function, which was illustrated by fitting the generalized Cobb-Douglas function to the U.S. data for Transportation Equipment Industry. For estimating the production function, they used a method in which one of the parameters (theta) is repeatedly cho...

The Pearsonian coefficient of correlation as a measure of association between two variates is highly prone to the deleterious effects of outlier observations (in data). Statisticians have proposed a number of formulas to obtain robust measures of correlation that are considered to be less affected by errors of observation, perturbation or presence...

Our higher education system needs restructuring and it should avoid conspicuous consumption. Institutions should try to earn money by doing some productive activities. It should be made mandatory that every teacher will produce a book in his discipline at an interval of every five years – not by merely collecting articles written by others, but b...