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2018

Singapore Management University

Research Collection School Of Economics

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Inference For Nonignorable Nonresponse With Callbacks, Zhong Guan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Jing Qin Dec 2018

Semiparametric Maximum Likelihood Inference For Nonignorable Nonresponse With Callbacks, Zhong Guan, Denis H. Y. Leung, Jing Qin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We model the nonresponse probabilities as logistic functions ofthe outcome variable and other covariates in the survey sampling study withcallback. The identification aspect of this callback model is investigated. Semiparametricmaximum likelihood estimators of the parameters in the responseprobabilities are proposed and studied. As a result, an efficient estimator ofthe mean of the outcome variable is constructed using the estimated responseprobabilities. Moreover, if a regression model for conditional mean of the outcomevariable given some covariate is available, then we can obtain an evenmore efficient estimate of the mean of the outcome variable by fitting the regressionmodel using an adjusted least squares …

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Root-N Consistency Of Intercept Estimators In A Binary Response Model Under Tail Restrictions, Lili Tan, Yichong Zhang Dec 2018

Root-N Consistency Of Intercept Estimators In A Binary Response Model Under Tail Restrictions, Lili Tan, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The intercept of the binary response model is irregularly identified when the supports of both the special regressor V and the error term ε are the whole real line. This leads to the estimator of the intercept having potentially a slower than √n convergence rate, which can result in a large estimation error in practice. This paper imposes addition tail restrictions which guarantee the regular identification of the intercept and thus the √n-consistency of its estimator. We then propose an estimator that achieves the √n rate. Finally, we extend our tail restrictions to a full-blown model with endogenous regressors.

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Mild-Explosive And Local-To-Mild-Explosive Autoregressions With Serially Correlated Errors, Yiu Lim Lui, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu Dec 2018

Mild-Explosive And Local-To-Mild-Explosive Autoregressions With Serially Correlated Errors, Yiu Lim Lui, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper firstly extends the results of Phillips and Magdalinos (2007a) by allowing for anti-persistent errors in mildly explosive autoregressive models. It is shown that the Cauchy asymptotic theory remains valid for the least squares (LS) estimator. The paper then extends the results of Phillips, Magdalinos and Giraitis (2010) by allowing for serially correlated errors of various forms in local-to-mild-explosive autoregressive models. It is shown that the result of smooth transition in the limit theory between local-to-unity and mild-explosiveness remains valid for the LS estimator. Finally, the limit theory for autoregression with intercept is developed.

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Sources Of Health Financing And Health Outcomes: A Panel Data Analysis, Tomoki Fujii Dec 2018

Sources Of Health Financing And Health Outcomes: A Panel Data Analysis, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the differential impacts of public and private sources of health spending on health outcomes using a triple difference approach. We find that private health spending has on average a higher health-promoting effect than public health spending. This result is robust with respect to the choice of outcome measure and covariates in the regression and driven primarily by the countries with ineffective governments. Once we restrict our sample to countries with effective governments, private health spending is no better than public health spending for improving the health outcome.

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Forecasting Large Covariance Matrix With High-Frequency Data: A Factor Correlation Matrix Approach, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse Dec 2018

Forecasting Large Covariance Matrix With High-Frequency Data: A Factor Correlation Matrix Approach, Yingjie Dong, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a factor correlation matrix approach to forecast large covariance matrix of asset returns using high-frequency data. We apply shrinkage method to estimate large correlation matrix and adopt principal component method to model the underlying latent factors. A vector autoregressive model is used to forecast the latent factors and hence the large correlation matrix. The realized variances are separately forecasted using the Heterogeneous Autoregressive model. The forecasted variances and correlations are then combined to forecast large covariance matrix. We conduct Monte Carlo studies to compare the finite sample performance of several methods of forecasting large covariance matrix. Our proposed …

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Quantile Treatment Effects And Bootstrap Inference Under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization, Xin Zheng, Yichong Zhang Dec 2018

Quantile Treatment Effects And Bootstrap Inference Under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization, Xin Zheng, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the estimation and inference of the quantile treatment effect under covariate-adaptive randomization. We propose three estimation methods: (1) the simple quantile regression (QR), (2) the QR with strata fixed effects, and (3) the inverse propensity score weighted QR. For the three estimators, we derive their asymptotic distributions uniformly over a set of quantile indexes and show that the estimator obtained from inverse propensity score weighted QR weakly dominates the other two in terms of efficiency, for a wide range of randomization schemes. For inference, we show that the weighted bootstrap tends to be conservative for methods (1) …

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Coarse Revealed Preference, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li, John K. Quah, Rui Tang Dec 2018

Coarse Revealed Preference, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li, John K. Quah, Rui Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We identify necessary and sufficient conditions under which a coarse data set canbe coarsely rationalized by a linear order (or weak order). The conditions are easy tocheck, and efficient algorithms are provided. We apply our theory to investigate theobservable restrictions of several economic models including (1) rational choice withimperfect observation; (2) multiple preferences; (3) monotone multiple preferences; and(4) minimax regret.

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The Grid Bootstrap For Continuous Time Models, Yiu Lim Lui, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu Nov 2018

The Grid Bootstrap For Continuous Time Models, Yiu Lim Lui, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the grid bootstrap for constructing confidence intervals for the persistence parameter in a class of continuous time models driven by a Levy process. Its asymptotic validity is established by assuming the sampling interval (h) shrinks to zero. Its improvement over the in-fill asymptotic theory is achieved by expanding the coefficient-based statistic around its in fill asymptotic distribution which is non-pivotal and depends on the initial condition. Monte Carlo studies show that the gird bootstrap method performs better than the in-fill asymptotic theory and much better than the long-span theory. Empirical applications to U.S. interest rate data highlight …

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Entrepreneurship, College, And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun Nov 2018

Entrepreneurship, College, And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model to evaluate the aggregate impact of college finance in an environment with entrepreneurship. The calibrated model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable in the United States. The calibration indicates this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college‐educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints if and when they eventually become entrepreneurs. Changes in financing constraints on entrepreneurs can thus affect college attendance, and changes in financing constraints on college can affect entrepreneurship rates as well.

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Threshold Regression Asymptotics: From The Compound Poisson Process To Two-Sided Brownian Motion, Ping Yu, Peter C. B. Phillips Nov 2018

Threshold Regression Asymptotics: From The Compound Poisson Process To Two-Sided Brownian Motion, Ping Yu, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

The asymptotic distribution of the least squares estimator in threshold regression is expressed in terms of a compound Poisson process when the threshold effect is fixed and as a functional of two-sided Brownian motion when the threshold effect shrinks to zero. This paper explains the relationship between this dual limit theory by showing how the asymptotic forms are linked in terms of joint and sequential limits. In one case, joint asymptotics apply when both the sample size diverges and the threshold effect shrinks to zero, whereas sequential asymptotics operate in the other case in which the sample size diverges first …

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Change Detection And The Causal Impact Of The Yield Curve, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Stan Hurn Nov 2018

Change Detection And The Causal Impact Of The Yield Curve, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Stan Hurn

Research Collection School Of Economics

Causal relationships in econometrics are typically based on the concept of predictability and are established by testing Granger causality. Such relationships are susceptible to change, especially during times of financial turbulence, making the real-time detection of instability an important practical issue. This article develops a test for detecting changes in causal relationships based on a recursive evolving window, which is analogous to a procedure used in recent work on financial bubble detection. The limiting distribution of the test takes a simple form under the null hypothesis and is easy to implement in conditions of homoskedasticity and conditional heteroskedasticity of an …

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Specification Tests Based On Mcmc Output, Yong Li, Jun Yu, Tao Zeng Nov 2018

Specification Tests Based On Mcmc Output, Yong Li, Jun Yu, Tao Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

Two test statistics are proposed to determine model specification after a model is estimated by an MCMC method. The first test is the MCMC version of IOSA test and its asymptotic null distribution is normal. The second test is motivated from the power enhancement technique of Fan et al. (2015). It combines a component (J1) that tests a null point hypothesis in an expanded model and a power enhancement component (J0) obtained from the first test. It is shown that J0 converges to zero when the null model is correctly specified and diverges when the null model is misspecified. Also …

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Strategic Sequential Bidding For Government Land Auction Sales – Evidence From Singapore, Sumit Agarwal, Jing Li, Ernie Teo, Alan Cheong Nov 2018

Strategic Sequential Bidding For Government Land Auction Sales – Evidence From Singapore, Sumit Agarwal, Jing Li, Ernie Teo, Alan Cheong

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the extent to which equilibrium auction prices are pushed up sequentially due to strategic bidding behaviors in government land auction sales. Using a unique dataset that covers the universe of tendering prices submitted by all developers for all residential land auction sales in Singapore, we find that a tenderer’s bids are significantly higher where there was a previous land parcel sold within two years and located within four kilometers. The elevated price margin decreases with time and geographic distance. Tracking sequential bids submitted by same developers over time, we find that the incumbent winner of a previous …

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The Impact Of In-House Unnatural Death On Property Values: Evidence From Hong Kong, Zheng Chang, Jing Li Nov 2018

The Impact Of In-House Unnatural Death On Property Values: Evidence From Hong Kong, Zheng Chang, Jing Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

The occurrence of in-house unnatural death could negatively affect the value of housing property. This study evaluates the geographic and temporal scope of the impact of unnatural death on property values in Hong Kong. By exploiting the spatial and intertemporal variation of the shock in a difference-in-differences approach, we find significant negative externalities of unnatural death incidence on neighborhood housing values. On average, units in which an unnatural death occurred experience a 25% drop in value following the death. Nearby units on the same floor also show a significant price drop of 4.5%. Prices of units on other floors of …

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News Co-Occurrence, Attention Spillover, And Return Predictability, Li Guo, Lin Peng, Yubo Tao, Jun Tu Nov 2018

News Co-Occurrence, Attention Spillover, And Return Predictability, Li Guo, Lin Peng, Yubo Tao, Jun Tu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the effect of investor attention spillover on stock return predictability. Using a novel measure, the News Network Triggered Attention index (NNTA), we find that NNTA negatively predicts market returns with a monthly in(out)-of-sample R-square of 5.97% (5.80%). In the cross-section, a long-short portfolio based on news co-occurrence generates a significant monthly alpha of 68 basis points. The results are robust to the inclusion of alternative attention proxies, sentiment measures, other news- and information-based predictors, across recession and expansion periods. We further validate the attention spillover effect by showing that news co-mentioning leads to greater increases in Google and …

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Revisiting The Foundations Of Dominant-Strategy Mechanisms, Yi-Chun Chen, Jiangtao Li Nov 2018

Revisiting The Foundations Of Dominant-Strategy Mechanisms, Yi-Chun Chen, Jiangtao Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

An important question in mechanism design is whether there is any theoretical foundation for the use of dominant-strategy mechanisms. This paper studies the maxmin and Bayesian foundations of dominant-strategy mechanisms in general social choice environments with quasi-linear preferences and private values. We propose a condition called the uniform shortest-path tree that, under regularity, ensures the foundations of dominant-strategy mechanisms. This exposes the underlying logic of the existence of such foundations in the single-unit auction setting, and extends the argument to cases where it was hitherto unknown. To prove this result, we adopt the linear programming approach to mechanism design. In …

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Potential Crime Risk And Housing Market Responses, Seonghoon Kim, Kwan Ok Lee Nov 2018

Potential Crime Risk And Housing Market Responses, Seonghoon Kim, Kwan Ok Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how information on local (dis)amenities is transmitted and manifested in housing markets. Using nationwide data on multifamily homes in South Korea, we analyze heterogeneity in the effect of a sex offender's presence on sale prices and rents of nearby homes. Our results demonstrate that the price effect of the offender's move-in varies significantly by spatial context. People react more strongly and persistently to the move-in of the offender in places wherein indicators of social connectedness are stronger, such as places with relatively low population density. We also find that, unlike housing prices, rents do not change in response …

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On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang Nov 2018

On Incentive Compatible, Individually Rational Public Good Provision Mechanisms, Takashi Kunimoto, Cuiling Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper characterizes mechanisms satisfying Bayesian incentive compatibility (BIC) and interim individual rationality (IIR) in the classical public good provision problem. Many papers in the literature obtain the results in the so-called standard model of ex ante identical agents with a continuous, closed interval of types. Although the standard model and more generally a continuum type space are widely used in the literature, it is nonetheless an abstraction of reality. Given that the public good provision problem has occupied a central application in the theory of mechanism design, we propose a "stress test" for the results in the standard model …

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Identifying Latent Grouped Patterns In Cointegrated Panels, Wenxin Huang, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su Nov 2018

Identifying Latent Grouped Patterns In Cointegrated Panels, Wenxin Huang, Sainan Jin, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a panel cointegration model with latent group structures that allows for heterogeneous long-run relationships across groups. We extend Su, Shi, and Phillips’ (2016) classifier-Lasso (C-Lasso) method to the nonstationary panels and allow for the presence of endogeneity in both the stationary and nonstationary regressors in the model. In addition, we allow the dimension of the stationary regressors to diverge with the sample size. We show that we can identify the individuals’ group membership and estimate the group-specific long-run cointegrated relationships simultaneously. We demonstrate the desirable property of uniform classification consistency and the oracle properties of both the C-Lasso …

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Labour Research Conference 2018: Upskilling Of Mature Workers, Stephen Hoskins, Luca Facchinello Nov 2018

Labour Research Conference 2018: Upskilling Of Mature Workers, Stephen Hoskins, Luca Facchinello

Research Collection School Of Economics

Many developed countries are approaching an era of ageing population due to an increase in longevity and decrease in fertility rates. Singapore is no exception, having one of the fastest ageing populations in Asia, which is driven by low fertility rates and the third longest life expectancy in the world. The number of elderly citizens, defined as those aged 65 and above, is expected to triple to 900,000 by 2030, making up about 28% of the total population in Singapore (Population SG, 2016). This changing population age profile, combined with a competitive labour market, means it makes business sense to …

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On Strategy-Proofness And The Salience Of Single-Peakedness, Shurojit Chatterji, Jordi Masso Nov 2018

On Strategy-Proofness And The Salience Of Single-Peakedness, Shurojit Chatterji, Jordi Masso

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider strategy-proof social choice functions operating on a rich domain of preference profiles. We show that if the social choice function satisfies in addition tops-onlyness, anonymity and unanimity then the preferences in the domain have to satisfy a variant of single-peakedness (referred to as semilattice single-peakedness). We do so by deriving from the social choice function an endogenous partial order (a semilattice) from which the notion of a semilattice single-peaked preference can be defined. We also provide a converse of this main finding. Finally, we show how well-known restricted domains under which nontrivial strategy-proof social choice functions are admissible …

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Estimation Of Large Dimensional Factor Models With An Unknown Number Of Breaks, Shujie Ma, Liangjun Su Nov 2018

Estimation Of Large Dimensional Factor Models With An Unknown Number Of Breaks, Shujie Ma, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we study the estimation of a large dimensional factor model when the factor loadingsexhibit an unknown number of changes over time. We propose a novel three-step procedure to detect the breaks if any and then identify their locations. In the first step, we divide the whole time span into subintervals and fit a conventional factor model on each interval. In the second step, we apply the adaptive fused group Lasso to identify intervals containing a break. In the third step, we devise a grid search method to estimate the location of the break on each identified interval. …

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Volume, Volatility, And Public News Announcements, Tim Bollerslev, Jia Li, Yuan Xue Oct 2018

Volume, Volatility, And Public News Announcements, Tim Bollerslev, Jia Li, Yuan Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide new empirical evidence for the way in which financial markets process information. Our results rely critically on high-frequency intraday price and volume data for the S&P 500 equity portfolio and U.S. Treasury bonds, along with new econometric techniques, for making inference on the relationship between trading intensity and spot volatility around public news announcements. Consistent with the predictions derived from a theoretical model in which investors agree to disagree, our estimates for the intraday volume-volatility elasticity around important news announcements are systematically below unity. Our elasticity estimates also decrease significantly with measures of disagreements in beliefs, economic uncertainty, …

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Identifying Latent Grouped Patterns In Panel Data Models With Interactive Fixed Effects, Liangjun Su, Gaosheng Ju Oct 2018

Identifying Latent Grouped Patterns In Panel Data Models With Interactive Fixed Effects, Liangjun Su, Gaosheng Ju

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider the estimation of latent grouped patterns in dynamic panel data models with interactive fixed effects. We assume that the individual slope coefficients are homogeneous within a group and heterogeneous across groups but each individual’s group membership is unknown to the researcher. We consider penalized principal component (PPC) estimation by extending the penalized-profile-likelihood-based C-Lasso of Su, Shi, and Phillips (2016) to panel data models with cross section dependence. Given the correct number of groups, we show that the C-Lasso can achieve simultaneous classification and estimation in a single step and exhibit the desirable property of uniform classification consistency. The …

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Does Health Insurance Make People Happier? Evidence From Massachusetts’ Healthcare Reform, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh Oct 2018

Does Health Insurance Make People Happier? Evidence From Massachusetts’ Healthcare Reform, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the effects of Massachusetts' healthcare reform on individuals' subjective well-being. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the reform significantly improved Massachusetts residents' overall life-satisfaction. This result is robust to various sensitivity checks and a falsification test. We also find that the reform improved mental health. An additional analysis on the Tennessee healthcare reform supports our findings' external validity. Using the reform as an instrument for health insurance coverage, we estimate its large impact on overall life-satisfaction. Our results provide novel evidence on the psychological consequences of Massachusetts' healthcare reform.

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Did The Massachusetts Healthcare Reform Make People Happier?, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh Oct 2018

Did The Massachusetts Healthcare Reform Make People Happier?, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the effects of Massachusetts’ healthcare reform on individuals’ subjective well-being. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the reform significantly improved Massachusetts residents’ overall life-satisfaction. This result is robust to various sensitivity checks and falsification tests. We find consistent evidence from other healthcare reforms such as the 2014 Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion and the 2005 Tennessee Medicaid disenrollment, supporting our findings’ external validity. Our results provide novel evidence on the psychological consequences of recent healthcare reforms expanding health insurance coverage to the uninsured.

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A Frequentist Approach To Bayesian Asymptotics, Tingting Cheng, Jiti Gao, Peter C. B. Phillips Oct 2018

A Frequentist Approach To Bayesian Asymptotics, Tingting Cheng, Jiti Gao, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Ergodic theorem shows that ergodic averages of the posterior draws converge in probability to the posterior mean under the stationarity assumption. The literature also shows that the posterior distribution is asymptotically normal when the sample size of the original data considered goes to infinity. To the best of our knowledge, there is little discussion on the large sample behaviour of the posterior mean. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap. In particular, we extend the posterior mean idea to the conditional mean case, which is conditioning on a given vector of summary statistics of the original data. We …

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Homogeneity Pursuit In Panel Data Models: Theory And Application, Wuyi Wang, Peter C. B. Phillips, Liangjun Su Sep 2018

Homogeneity Pursuit In Panel Data Models: Theory And Application, Wuyi Wang, Peter C. B. Phillips, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the estimation of a panel data model with latent structures where individuals can be classified into different groups with the slope parameters being homogeneous within the same group but heterogeneous across groups. To identify the unknown group structure of vector parameters, we design an algorithm called Panel-CARDS. We show that it can identify the true group structure asymptotically and estimate the model parameters consistently at the same time. Simulations evaluate the performance and corroborate the asymptotic theory in several practical design settings. The empirical application reveals the heterogeneous grouping effect of income on democracy.

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Sharing Sequential Values In A Network, Ruben Juarez, Yu Ko Chiu, Jingyi Xue Sep 2018

Sharing Sequential Values In A Network, Ruben Juarez, Yu Ko Chiu, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

Consider a sequential process where agents have individual values at every possible step. A planner is in charge of selecting steps and distributing the accumulated aggregate values among a number of agents. We model this process by a directed network, whereby each edge is associated with a vector of individual values. This model applies to several new and existing problems, e.g. developing a connected public facility and distributing total values received by surrounding districts, selecting a long-term production project and sharing final profits among partners of a firm, or choosing a machine schedule to serve different tasks and distributing total …

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Editorial For The Special Issue Entitled: New Advances In Spatial Econometrics: Interactions Matter, Nicolas Debarsy, Zhenlin Yang Sep 2018

Editorial For The Special Issue Entitled: New Advances In Spatial Econometrics: Interactions Matter, Nicolas Debarsy, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This Regional Science and Urban Economics special issue collects together a subset of contributions presented in the 15th edition of the International Workshop in Spatial Econometrics and Statistics, which was organized by the Department of Economics of the University of Orléans (Laboratoire d’Economie d’Orléans – UMR CNRS 7322) on May 26-27 2016

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