Bayesian modeling of the evolution of male height in 18th century Finland from incomplete data

Antti Penttinen, Elena Moltchanova and Ilkka Nummela

Economics & Human Biology, 2013, vol. 11, issue 4, 405-415

Abstract: Data on army recruits’ height are frequently available and can be used to analyze the economics and welfare of the population in different periods of history. However, such data are not a random sample from the whole population at the time of interest, but instead is skewed since the short men were less likely to be recruited. In statistical terms this means that the data are left-truncated. Although truncation is well-understood in statistics a further complication is that the truncation threshold is not known, may vary from time to time, and auxiliary information on the threshold is not at our disposal.

Keywords: Skewed normal distribution; Random truncation; Bayesian smoothing; MCMC; History of economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:11:y:2013:i:4:p:405-415

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2013.06.002

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