Ordinal Distributional Change and Conservative Transition Benchmarks: Measurement, Identification, and Inference
有序分布变化与保守转移基准:测度、识别与推断
Repeated cross-sections reveal changes in ordinal distributions but not the transitions producing them. I axiomatically characterize a threshold-weighted probability metric for ordinal change from threshold-crossing principles. For any threshold-additive ordinal geometry, the discrepancy coincides with the Wasserstein--1 distance induced by that ground metric and measures minimum displacement; its optimizing plans define conservative transition benchmarks. With missing…