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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Gaussian Inference In Ar(1) Time Series With Or Without A Unit Root, Peter C. B. Phillips, Chirok Han Jun 2008

Gaussian Inference In Ar(1) Time Series With Or Without A Unit Root, Peter C. B. Phillips, Chirok Han

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper introduces a simple first-difference-based approach to estimation and inference for the AR(1) model. The estimates have virtually no finite-sample bias and are not sensitive to initial conditions, and the approach has the unusual advantage that a Gaussian central limit theory applies and is continuous as the autoregressive coefficient passes through unity with a uniform rate of convergence. En route, a useful central limit theorem (CLT) for sample covariances of linear processes is given, following Phillips and Solo (1992, Annals of Statistics, 20, 971–1001). The approach also has useful extensions to dynamic panels.


Inference For General Parametric Functions In Box-Cox-Type Transformation Models, Zhenlin Yang, Eden Ka-Ho Wu, Anthony F. Desmond Jun 2008

Inference For General Parametric Functions In Box-Cox-Type Transformation Models, Zhenlin Yang, Eden Ka-Ho Wu, Anthony F. Desmond

Research Collection School Of Economics

The authors propose a simple but general method of inference for a parametric function of the Box-Cox-type transformation model. Their approach is built upon the classical normal theory but takes parameter estimation into account. It quickly leads to test statistics and confidence intervals for a linear combination of scaled or unscaled regression coefficients, as well as for the survivor function and marginal effects on the median or other quantile functions of an original response. The authors show through simulations that the finite-sample performance of their method is often superior to the delta method, and that their approach is robust to …


Time-Varying Incentives In The Mutual Fund Industry, Jacques Olivier, Anthony S. Tay Jun 2008

Time-Varying Incentives In The Mutual Fund Industry, Jacques Olivier, Anthony S. Tay

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper re-examines the incentives of mutual fund managers arising from investor flows. We provide evidence that the convexity of the flow-performance relationship varies with economic activity. We show that the effect is economically large and is not driven by abnormal years. We test two possible channels through which this pattern may arise. We investigate implications of the timevarying convexity for the incentives of managers to alter strategically the risk of their portfolios. We provide evidence that poor mid-year performers increase the risk of the portfolio only when economic activity is strong. Finally, we briefly discuss some methodological implications.


Grasping The Small: The Political Economy Of Growth, Poverty And The Role Of The State In Two Chinese Provinces, John A. Donaldson Jun 2008

Grasping The Small: The Political Economy Of Growth, Poverty And The Role Of The State In Two Chinese Provinces, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.


Gene Patenting In The Life Sciences Industry: Boon Or Bane?, Knowledge@Smu May 2008

Gene Patenting In The Life Sciences Industry: Boon Or Bane?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Does gene patenting encourage or hinder knowledge diffusion and take-up in the life sciences industry? Research by Singapore Management University management professor Kenneth Huang, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Fiona Murray found that patenting can have a negative impact on scientific progress. Huang spoke to Knowledge@SMU about the implications of his research findings in the Singapore context.


Skilled And Unskilled Wages In A Globlizing World, 1968-1998, Davin Chor May 2008

Skilled And Unskilled Wages In A Globlizing World, 1968-1998, Davin Chor

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper constructs a data set on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) adjusted skilled and unskilled wages in 139 countries for the period 1968-1998, based on the International La- bor Organization's (ILO) annual October Inquiry and the Freeman and Oostendorp (2000) Occupational Wages Around the World (OWW) le. It nds strong evidence for the ex- istence of well-integrated markets for skilled and unskilled labor, justifying the approach of constructing a skilled wage series and an unskilled wage series. Several signi cant re- sults emerged from an analysis of a representative subset of 67 countries which provided unbroken coverage for 1970-1994: (i) there is …


Indescribability And Asymmetric Information At The Contracting Stage, Takashi Kunimoto May 2008

Indescribability And Asymmetric Information At The Contracting Stage, Takashi Kunimoto

Research Collection School Of Economics

Maskin and Tirole [Maskin, E., Tirole, J., 1999. Unforeseen contingencies and incomplete contracts. Review of Economic Studies, 66, 83–114] show that indescribability does not matter for contractual incompleteness when there is symmetric information both at the contracting stage and at the trading stage. Following their setup, I show that with asymmetric information at both stages, indescribability can matter.


Local Polynomial Estimation Of Nonparametric Simultaneous Equations Models, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah May 2008

Local Polynomial Estimation Of Nonparametric Simultaneous Equations Models, Liangjun Su, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

We define a new procedure for consistent estimation of nonparametric simultaneous equations models under the conditional mean independence restriction of Newey et al. [1999. Nonparametric estimation of triangular simultaneous equation models. Econometrica 67, 565-603]. It is based upon local polynomial regression and marginal integration techniques. We establish the asymptotic distribution of our estimator under weak data dependence conditions. Simulation evidence suggests that our estimator may significantly outperform the estimators of Pinkse [2000. Nonparametric two-step regression estimation when regressors and errors are dependent. Canadian Journal of Statistics 28, 289-300] and Newey and Powell [2003. Instrumental variable estimation of nonparametric models. Econometrica …


How Does Vietnam's Accession To The World Trade Organization Change The Spatial Incidence Of Poverty?, Tomoki Fujii, David Roland-Holst Apr 2008

How Does Vietnam's Accession To The World Trade Organization Change The Spatial Incidence Of Poverty?, Tomoki Fujii, David Roland-Holst

Research Collection School Of Economics

Trade liberalization is good for growth, and growth is good for the poor. This argument is simple but powerful. It has served as the departure point for discussion of the link between trade and poverty among economists and policy-makers, regardless of whether and to what extent they buy this argument. Krueger (1998) considers the inefficiencies that import substitution strategy creates and argues that trade liberalization undertaken at a period of low or negative growth rates can normally lead to a period of higher growth rates. Bhagwati and Srinivasan (2002) emphasize the empirical evidence of China and India. That is, these …


Corruption, Delays, And The Pattern Of Trade, Quoc-Anh Do, Karine Serfaty-De Medeiros Apr 2008

Corruption, Delays, And The Pattern Of Trade, Quoc-Anh Do, Karine Serfaty-De Medeiros

Research Collection School Of Economics

We argue that corruption deters international trade by causing delays in exporting and importing, both at customs and in other required administrative procedures. We study three manifestations of corruption as a barrier to trade. The corruption effect is both significant and economically sizeable. We first show the negative relationship between the exporters and importers levels of corruption and trade volumes at the country level in a gravity framework. This country-level effect implies that a standard deviation increase in the exporters corruption level causes a 27% drop in exports. We then show that corruption indeed operates through delays: we establish that …


Labor Hoarding Contracts And Coordination Fictions, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan Apr 2008

Labor Hoarding Contracts And Coordination Fictions, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers a directed search model with risk-neutral firms and risk-averse workers. Although each firm has only one job to fill, firms can hire as many workers as they wish, and the wage a worker is paid can be contingent on the queue length at the firm and his position in the queue. We first show that, contrary to standard directed search models, the application subgame does not necessarily have a unique symmetric solution; although uniqueness is guaranteed if all firms post Flat-Wage Contracts (FWCs), i.e., contracts where firms commit to employ a fixed number of workers at a …


Asymmetric Information And Conglomerate Discount: Evidence From Spinoffs, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jing Pan Mar 2008

Asymmetric Information And Conglomerate Discount: Evidence From Spinoffs, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jing Pan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The existing literature argues that diversified firms may be undervalued due to the information asymmetry between a firm's management and the market. Splitting the firm's divisions into multiple business components is thought to facilitate the market valuation of each component more accurately. We investigate the information hypothesis from corporate spinoffs from 1981 through 2004. We use the post-spinoff data to reconstruct the diversified firm, assess the improvement in value at the combined firm level, and relate the value improvement to the change in the level of information asymmetry. We find that, prior to the spinoff, the sample firms have significantly …


Testing Intergroup Concordance In Ranking Experiments With Two Groups Of Judges, Dawn J. Dekle, Leung, Denis H. Y., Min Zhu Mar 2008

Testing Intergroup Concordance In Ranking Experiments With Two Groups Of Judges, Dawn J. Dekle, Leung, Denis H. Y., Min Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Across many areas of psychology, concordance is commonly used to measure the (intragroup) agreement in ranking a number of items by a group of judges. Sometimes, however, the judges come from multiple groups, and in those situations, the interest is to measure the concordance between groups, under the assumption that there is some within-group concordance. In this investigation, existing methods are compared under a variety of scenarios. Permutation theory is used to calculate the error rates and the power of the methods. Missing data situations are also studied. The results indicate that the performance of the methods depend on (a) …


Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha Mar 2008

Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case, consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping generations model, this leads naturally to multiple and unstable equilibria. Under static expectations, it also leads to a well-defined dynamics, including possible historical traps, implosions involving ever-diminishing capital stock and ever-increasing interest rates, and the feasibility of optimal one-time interventions.


Testing Structural Change In Time-Series Nonparametric Regression Models, Liangjun Su, Zhijie Xiao Mar 2008

Testing Structural Change In Time-Series Nonparametric Regression Models, Liangjun Su, Zhijie Xiao

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a CUSUM type of test for structural change in dynamic nonparametric regression models. It is based upon the cumulative sums of weighted residuals from a single nonparametric regression and complements the conventional parameter instability tests in parametric models. We derive the limiting distributions of the test under both the null hypothesis and sequences of local alternatives. A boot-strap procedure is also proposed and its validity is justified. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted to investigate the finite sample properties of our test.


Asymptotic Variance And Extensions Of A Denisty-Weighted-Response Semiparametric Estimator, Myoung-Jae Lee, Fali Huang, Young-Sook Kim Mar 2008

Asymptotic Variance And Extensions Of A Denisty-Weighted-Response Semiparametric Estimator, Myoung-Jae Lee, Fali Huang, Young-Sook Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Building on some early works, Lewbel (2000) proposed estimators for binary and ordered discrete response models with endogenous regressors. These estimators have been extended for panel data and for truncated and censored models by later papers. The estimators are particularly innovative in that the latent linear regression functions are pulled out of the nonlinear limited dependent variable models, which are then treated as if they were the usual linear models. But understanding the estimators and their applications have been “hampered” by less-than-ideal expositions and assumptions. For this problem, this short note reviews the estimators and makes the following three points. …


Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang Mar 2008

Financial Frictions, Capital Reallocation, And Aggregate Fluctuations, Jürgen Von Hagen, Haiping Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We address an important business cycle fact, i.e., the amplified and hump-shaped responses of output to productivity shocks, in a dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions. Models with financial frictions in the current literature have either the amplification mechanism or the propagation mechanism. Our model shows that the dynamic interaction of borrowing constraints, endogenous capital accumulation, and capital reallocation among agents with different productivity constitutes a mechanism through which the effects of productivity shock on aggregate output are amplified and propagated, more in line with the empirical evidence than other related models in the literature.


Advertising And Collusion In Retail Markets, Kyle Bagwell, Gea Myoung Lee Mar 2008

Advertising And Collusion In Retail Markets, Kyle Bagwell, Gea Myoung Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider non-price advertising by retail firms that are privately informed as to their respective production costs. We first analyze a static model. We construct an advertising equilibrium, in which informed consumers use an advertising search rule whereby they buy from the highest-advertising firm. Consumers are rational in using the advertising search rule, since the lowest-cost firm advertises the most and also selects the lowest price. Even though the advertising equilibrium facilitates productive efficiency, we establish conditions under which firms enjoy higher expected profit when advertising is banned. Consumer welfare falls in this case, however. We next analyze a dynamic …


Optimal Collusion With Internal Contracting, Gea Myoung Lee Feb 2008

Optimal Collusion With Internal Contracting, Gea Myoung Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we develop a model of collusion in which two firms play an infinitelyrepeated Bertrand game when each firm has a privately-informed agent. The colluding firms, fixing prices, allocate market shares based on the agent’s information as to cost types. We emphasize that the presence of privately-informed agents may provide firms with a strategic opportunity to exploit an interaction between internal contracting and market-sharing arrangement: the contracts with agents may be used to induce firms’ truthful communication in their collusion, and collusive market-share allocation may act to reduce the agents’ information rents.


Mapping The Discipline Of The Olympic Games An Author-Cocitation Analysis, Peter Warning, Rosie Ching, Kristine Toohey Feb 2008

Mapping The Discipline Of The Olympic Games An Author-Cocitation Analysis, Peter Warning, Rosie Ching, Kristine Toohey

Research Collection School Of Economics

The authors conducted an author cocitation analysis on prominent authors writing about the Olympics during the 1990s. Author cocitation is an established bibliometric technique that can be used to measure the relative similarities of topics written about by the cited authors. This enables a visual representation of the “intellectual space” of the discipline, in this case the Olympics, to be created for the period under review. So core and peripheral research areas are identified, along with their major contributors. The representation appears as a two-dimensional cluster-enhanced map. Subject expertise was then applied to the results to place labels on the …


Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman Jan 2008

Are De Jure Labor Laws Absolute? Formal Manufacturing In India, Gurmeet Singh Ghumman

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

We investigate the view that de facto labor market conditions are important in evaluating the effects of labor institutions in developing countries where enactment does not necessarily imply enforcement. Using India as a case study we empirically investigate the effects of labor markets on the organized manufacturing sector from 1970 to 1997. Recognizing that the state can intervene in the outcome of labor disputes we construct a measure to proxy the degree of the state legislature's prejudice towards pro-worker causes. We argue that leftist and communist political parties can interfere in the resolution of disputes in favor of workers through …


Exchange Rate Changes And Trade Balance: An Empirical Study Of The Case Of Japan, Ziwei Shao Jan 2008

Exchange Rate Changes And Trade Balance: An Empirical Study Of The Case Of Japan, Ziwei Shao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper attempts to identify the major economic factors that influence the bilateral trade balance between Japan and the US. Differing from conventional elasticities approach, one more variable--the net foreign assets--is added in the Vector Autoregression estimation using quarterly data from 1980: I to 2006: IV. The Johansen and Juselius result indicates three long-run relationships among five macro variables: trade balance, domestic income, foreign income, net foreign assets and real exchange rate. Short run adjustment parameters are identified as coefficients of the error correction terms. The variance in trade balance due to variations in the two macro variables--the exchange rate …


Birth Spacing Effect On Children's Attainments: Indentification Using Instrument Variables, Jing Xie Jan 2008

Birth Spacing Effect On Children's Attainments: Indentification Using Instrument Variables, Jing Xie

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In this study, I address the relationship between an often overlooked dimension of family structure--the spacing between children's births--and the degree of children's attainments such as Mathematics, Reading Cognition and Reading Comprehension. Comparing to the results of OLS estimation, 2SLS Estimation using Twin and Catholic as Instrument Variables shows less significant effects on children's attainments. Hausman Test shows that OLS estimators are not consistent with 2SLS estimators, which means there is endogenous problem in OLS estimation. As the result in 2SLS shows the different spacing effects in different spacing groups, it is possible to use nonlinear estimation (quadratic form of …


Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha Jan 2008

Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping generations model, this leads naturally to multiple and unstable equilibria. Under static expectations, it also leads to a well-defined dynamics, including possible historical traps, implosions involving ever-diminishing capital stock and ever-increasing interest rates, and the feasibility of optimal one-time interventions.


Two-Sample Estimation Of Poverty Rates For Disabled People: An Application To Tanzania, Tomoki Fujii Jan 2008

Two-Sample Estimation Of Poverty Rates For Disabled People: An Application To Tanzania, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Estimating poverty measures for disabled people in developing countries is di cult, partly because relevant data are not available. We develop two methods to estimate poverty by the disability status of the household head. We extend the small-area estimation proposed by Elbers, Lanjouw and Lanjouw (2002, 2003) so that we can run a regression on head's disability status even when such information is unavailable in the survey. We do so by aggregation and by moment adjusted two sample instrumental variable estimation. Our results from Tanzania show that both methods work well, and that disability is indeed associated with poverty.


Discussion Of Balistreri, Hillberry, And Rutherford (2007): Structural Estimation And Solution Of International Trade Models With Heterogeneous Firms, Davin Chor Jan 2008

Discussion Of Balistreri, Hillberry, And Rutherford (2007): Structural Estimation And Solution Of International Trade Models With Heterogeneous Firms, Davin Chor

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.


Education And Trade, Pao Li Chang, Fali Huang Jan 2008

Education And Trade, Pao Li Chang, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper examines the inherent link between a countryís education system and its comparative advantage in trade. It suggests that di§erences in education systems across countries are probably a stable equilibrium result that is compatible with and reinforced by trade patterns. In equilibrium, two distinct types of countries emerge, one that exports creativity-intensive products and has an education system encouraging diversity (as illustrated by the US), and the other one that exports high-quality manufactured products and has an education system promoting homogeneity in student quality (as illustrated by Japan). Our Öndings present a novel explanation for the coexistence of low …


Rational And Boundedly Rational Behavior In Sender-Receiver Games, Massimiliano Landi, Domenico Colucci Jan 2008

Rational And Boundedly Rational Behavior In Sender-Receiver Games, Massimiliano Landi, Domenico Colucci

Research Collection School Of Economics

The authors investigate the strategic rationale behind the message sent by Osama bin Laden on the eve of the 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. They model this situation as a signaling game in which a population of receivers takes a binary choice, the outcome is decided by majority rule, sender and receivers have conflicting interests, and there is uncertainty about both players’ degree of rationality. They characterize the structure of the sequential equilibria of the game as a function of the parameters governing the uncertainty and find that in all pure strategy equilibria, the outcome most preferred by the rational sender …


Adaptive Estimation Of Autoregressive Models With Time-Varying Variances, Ke-Li Xu, Peter C. B. Phillips Jan 2008

Adaptive Estimation Of Autoregressive Models With Time-Varying Variances, Ke-Li Xu, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Stable autoregressive models are considered with martingale differences errors scaled by an unknown nonparametric time-varying function generating heterogeneity. An important special case involves structural change in the error variance, but in most practical cases the pattern of variance change over time is unknown and may involve shifts at unknown discrete points in time, continuous evolution or combinations of the two. This paper develops kernel-based estimators of the residual variances and associated adaptive least squares (ALS) estimators of the autoregressive coefficients. Simulations show that efficiency gains are achieved by the adaptive procedure.


Refined Inference On Long Memory In Realized Volatility, Peter C. B. Phillips, Offer Lieberman Jan 2008

Refined Inference On Long Memory In Realized Volatility, Peter C. B. Phillips, Offer Lieberman

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is an emerging consensus in empirical finance that realized volatility series typically display long range dependence with a memory parameter around 0.4 (Andersen et al., 2001; Martens et al., 2004). The present article provides some illustrative analysis of how long memory may arise from the accumulative process underlying realized volatility. The article also uses results in Lieberman and Phillips (2004, 2005) to refine statistical inference about by higher order theory. Standard asymptotic theory has an error rate for error rejection probabilities, and the theory used here refines the approximation to an error rate of. The new formula is independent …