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Heteroskedasticity Of Unknown Form In Spatial Autoregressive Models With Moving Average Disturbance Term, Osman Dogan

Economics Working Papers

In this study, I investigate the necessary condition for consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of spatial models with a spatial moving average process in the disturbance term. I show that the MLE of spatial autoregressive and spatial moving average parameters is generally inconsistent when heteroskedasticity is not considered in the estimation. I also show that the MLE of parameters of exogenous variables is inconsistent and determine its asymptotic bias. I provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the MLE. The simulation results indicate that the MLE imposes a substantial amount of bias on both autoregressive and moving …

Toward A Quantitative Theory Of Food Consumption Choices And Body Weight, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

We propose a calibrated dynamic model of food consumption choices and body weight to study changes in daily caloric intake, weight, and the away-from-home share of calories consumed by adult men and women in the U.S. during the period between 1971 and 2006. Calibration reveals substantial preference heterogeneity between men and women. For example, utility losses stemming from weight gains are ten times greater for women compared to men. Counterfactual experiments show that changes in food prices and household income account for half of the increase in weight of adult men, but only a small fraction of women’s weight. We …

The ‘Mommy Tax’ And ‘Daddy Bonus’: Parenthood And Personal Income In The United States Between 1990 And 2010, Justine Calcagno

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines the relationship between parenthood and personal income by sex in the United States between 1990 and 2010.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data analyzed in this report indicate three key trends. First, women who were parents had substantially lower median personal incomes than men who were parents. Second, men who were parents earned markedly higher personal …

Regional Integration And National Social Policies, Mary Anne Madeira

Publications and Research

How does regionalization affect national social policies? Although there is an extensive literature on the effects of globalization on social protection, the literature on the impact of regional integration is much less developed. I argue that the distinctive nature of regionalization processes calls for rigorous empirical testing of the domestic policy effects of regional integration. To this end, using an innovative dataset that measures the degree to which countries are integrated into regional economic and political organizations, this article uses statistical analysis to consider the influence of regional integration on government social spending. The results are surprising: regionalization has a …

The Concentration Of Household Income In The United States By Race/Ethnicity And Latino Nationalities, 1990 - 2010, Justine Calcagno

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning Latinos in the United States between 1990 and 2010 – particularly the concentration of household income.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data indicate a growing concentration of income among upper-earning households in the U.S. total population, among the wealthiest earners in each major race/ethnic group, and among the five largest Latino …

Economic Dimensions Of The Foreclosure Crisis: A Focus On The New York City Msa, Sean P. Macdonald, Eric Doviak

Publications and Research

Employing Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data on loan originations from 2004 – 2010 and 2010 New York State preforeclosure filing notices, this study seeks to identify the correlation between some characteristics of census tracts and the distribution of pre-foreclosure filing notices and high cost loans within the New York City metropolitan area from 2006 through 2012. The findings are examined within the context of the census tracts within which borrowers resided. American Community Survey data on employment-population ratios, poverty rates, and median household income were then matched to our HMDA-PFF dataset to obtain a measure of the relationship of particular …

Engines Of Liberation Redux When Home Appliances Prices Are Endogenous, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

We propose a model of the household where the transmission mechanism between home appliances and women’s labor supply is identical to the one in Greenwood et al. (2005b) with one important exception.We explicitly model firms’ pricing and output choices in the appliances sector and thus, the price of home appliances is determined endogenously by the laws of supply and demand rather than being taken exogenously from outside the model.We use this new framework to characterize the general equilibrium effects of rising household wages on the price of home appliances, and thus ultimately women’s labor supply. The ratio between the price …

State Revenue Forecasting Accuracy, Dan Williams, Joseph Ononchie

Publications and Research

This paper examines forecasting accuracy of state revenue forecasting for 50 states using data published on the National Association of State Budget Officer’s (NASBO) website (www.nasbo.org). The data shows four categories of revenue: sales tax, corporate income tax, personal income tax, and all other (as a residual from total taxes). It shows some evidence that forecast bias reflects a hedge against uncertainty; however, there is also evidence that there is a counterbalancing preference to find the money needed to provide the services demanded.

Adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo Sampling And Estimation In Mata, Matthew J. Baker

Economics Working Papers

I describe algorithms for drawing from distributions using adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, introduce a Mata function for performing adaptive MCMC, amcmc(), and a suite of functions amcmc *() allowing an alternative implementation of adaptive MCMC. amcmc() and amcmc *() may be used in conjunction with models set up to work with Mata's [M-5] moptimize( ) or [M-5] optimize( ), or with stand-alone functions. To show how the routines might be used in estimation problems, I give two examples of what Chernozukov and Hong (2003) refer to as Quasi-Bayesian or Laplace-Type estimators - simulation-based estimators employing MCMC sampling. …

From Antipolitics To Post-Neoliberalism: A Conversation With James Ferguson, Nils Gilman, Miriam Ticktin, James Ferguson

Publications and Research

Humanity co-editors Nils Gilman and Miriam Ticktin spoke with James Ferguson on May 31, 2013, at Stanford University.

Design And Use Of Rubrics In Undergraduate Economics Courses, Sebastien Buttet, Veronika Dolar

Publications and Research

The purpose of this paper is threefold; first we explain how rubrics can be used in undergraduate economics courses not only as an assessment tool, but also as an effective teaching and learning tool. Next, we show how to design a rubric, using a simple production possibilities frontier (PPF) example with a four-step method that can be applied to any short- answer assignment or exam question. Finally, we provide three additional examples of short- answer questions with accompanying answers and rubrics that instructors can study and use, in order to develop and improve their own rubric-writing skills.

Tax Structure And Revenue Instability: The Great Recession And The States, Howard Chernick, Cordelia Reimers, Jennifer Tennant

Publications and Research

The Great Recession had the most severe impact on state tax revenues of any downturn since the Great Depression. We hypothesize that states with more progressive tax structures are more vulnerable to economic downturns, and that progressivity and income volatility may interact to amplify the recession’s fiscal impact. We find that, while potential revenue exposure is greater in more progressive states, the most important source of variation was differences in income concentration and capital gains shares in the top 5 percent of taxpayers. Though the interaction between income volatility and high tax burdens at the top did produce large decreases …

Which Extramural Scientists Were Funded By Nih From Its Arra Funds?, Martin D. Sorin, Randall Hannum

Publications and Research

NIH distributed $10 billion of ARRA research funds among Principal Investigators (PIs) in 2009-2010. We studied how well the program achieved the goal of creating and retaining jobs. To analyze the distribution of ARRA funding among PIs, they were categorized in two ways: One was based on their history of research funding; the other on the type of funding, ARRA and non-ARRA, each received in 2009 and 2010. These classifications provide insights into who received ARRA funding and how many research PI jobs were created or retained. We found that the majority of ARRA award recipients already had grants and …

A Simple Treatment Of The Liquidity Trap For Intermediate Macroeconomics Courses, Sebastien Buttet, Udayan Roy

Publications and Research

Several leading undergraduate intermediate macroeconomics textbooks now include a simple reduced-form New Keynesian model of short-run dynamics (alongside the IS-LM model). Unfortunately, there is no accompanying description of how the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates affects the model. In this article, the authors show how the aforementioned model can easily be modified to teach undergraduate students about the significance of the zero lower bound for economic performance and policy. This acquires additional significance because economies such as the United States and Japan have been close to the zero lower bound since 2008 and 1995, respectively. The authors show …

Self- Employment In Cuba After The 6th Party Congress, Mario A. Gonzalez-Corzo, Orlando Justo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Does U.S. Macroeconomic News Make Emerging Financial Markets Riskier?, Esin Cakan, Nadia Doytch, Kamal P. Upadhyaya

Publications and Research

This study analyzes the impacts of US macroeconomic announcement surprises on the volatility of twelve emerging stock markets by employing asymmetric GJR-GARCH model. The model includes both positive and negative surprises about inflation and unemployment rate announcements in the U.S. We find that volatility shocks are persistent and asymmetric. Asymmetric volatility increases with bad news on US inflation in five out of the twelve countries studied and it increases with a bad news on U.S. unemployment in four out of twelve countries. Asymmetric volatility decreases with good news about US employment situation in eight countries out of twelve countries. Such …