Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Efficiency Of Occupational Licensing During The Gilded And Progressive Eras: Evidence From Judicial Reviews, Mark T. Kanazawa

Department of Economics Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Pell Grants And Labor Supply: Evidence From A Regression Kink, Michael S. Kofoed

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

A concern in higher education policy is that students are taking longer to graduate. One possible reason for this observation is an increase in off-campus labor market participation among college students. Financial aid may play a role in the labor/study choice of college students—as college becomes more affordable, students my substitute away from work and toward increased study. I use data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to exploit nonlinearity in the Pell Grant formula to estimate a regression kink and regression discontinuity designs. I find that conditional on receiving the minimum of $550, students reduce their labor …

The No-Arbitrage Hypothesis And Inertia In Forward Markets, José Luis Ferreira, Praveen Kujal, Stephen Rassenti

ESI Working Papers

Allaz (1992) showed that the no-arbitrage condition in forward markets is obtained as a feature of the equilibrium if the model allows for strategic behavior on the part of the buyers. He showed that having active buyers is equivalent to passive buyers plus the no-arbitrage hypothesis. We test this experimentally in a forward market by allowing for active buyer’s under exogenously or endogenously determined market closure. We further test an inertia hypothesis that looks at whether past participation in a spot-market results in quantities being limited in the forward market stage. Importantly, the no-arbitrage condition can only be tested with …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 6, Number 2, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Borderplex Economic Outlook To 2023, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Spatial Wage Curves For Formal And Informal Workers In Turkey, Badi H. Baltagi, Yusuf Soner Başkaya

Center for Policy Research

This paper estimates spatial wage curves for formal and informal workers in Turkey using individual level data from the Turkish Household Labor Force Survey (THLFS) provided by TURKSTAT for the period 2008-2014. Unlike previous studies on wage curves for formal and informal workers, we extend the analysis to allow for spatial effects. We also consider household characteristics that would affect the selection into formal employment, informal employment, and non-employment. We find that the spatial wage curve relation holds both for formal and informal workers in Turkey for a variety of specifications. In general, the wages of informal workers are more …

Bayesian Estimation Of Multivariate Panel Probits With Higher-Order Network Interdependence And An Application To Firms' Global Market Participation In Guangdong, Badi H. Baltagi, Peter H. Egger, Michaela Kesina

Center for Policy Research

This paper proposes a Bayesian estimation framework for panel-data sets with binary dependent variables where a large number of cross-sectional units is observed over a short period of time, and cross-sectional units are interdependent in more than a single network domain. The latter provides for a substantial degree of flexibility towards modelling the decay function in network neighborliness (e.g., by disentangling the importance of rings of neighbors) or towards allowing for several channels of interdependence whose relative importance is unknown ex ante. Besides the flexible parameterization of cross-sectional dependence, the approach allows for simultaneity of the equations. These features should …

Transitioning To A Circular Economy: A Systematic Review Of Its Drivers And Barriers, Jovan Tan, Fabien Jianwei Tan, Seeram Ramakrishna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Advancing societal's progress to achieve circularity is imperative as our linear (take, make, waste) economic model is highly unsustainable. It depletes our natural resources and substantially contributes to pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. Our continued participation in the linear economy will also expose businesses to volatile resource prices and supply disruptions resulting from the scarcity of critical materials and geopolitical factors. Hence, there are compelling reasons for businesses to transit and participate in the circular economy. However, anecdotal evidence suggests limited practical implementations. Therefore, this systematic review aims to determine the most significant drivers and barriers that influence business …

Domains For Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Functions, Salles Paulo Daniel Ramos

Research Collection School Of Economics

We present here a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an MD-Connected Domain to support a Well Behaved Monotonic Social Choice Function. We require the domain to have a minimal number of preferences in which a pair of alternatives flips their relation, and these reversals must occurr in accordance to a tree graph. While this condition cannot be sum-marized by a set of restrictions on individual preferences, we provide two alternative characterizations that can, one that is necessary and another that is sufficient.

Risk Price Variation: The Missing Half Of Empirical Asset Pricing, Andrew John Patton, Brian M. Weller

Research Collection School Of Economics

Equal compensation across assets for the same risk exposures is a bedrock of asset pricing theory and empirics. Yet real-world frictions can violate this equality and create apparently high Sharpe ratio opportunities. We develop new methods for asset pricing with cross-sectional heterogeneity in compensation for risk. We extend k-means clustering to group assets by risk prices and introduce a formal test for whether differences in risk premiums across market segments are too large to occur by chance. We find significant evidence of cross-sectional variation in risk prices for almost all combinations of test assets, factor models, and time periods considered.

Securing Repo: Counterparty Risk And Collateral Supply Effects In The Tri-Party Repo Market, Stephen H. Frank

Doctoral Dissertations (DBA)

I examine the co-variance between tri-party repurchase agreement (repo) spreads and proxies for collateral values and counterparty risk. Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC), the Federal Reserve (Fed) has taken measures to mitigate repo market instability. These measures have collectively placed the Fed astride repo markets as ongoing borrower, lender and purchaser of US Treasury and Agency securities. By analyzing the relationships between repo spreads, the US 10-year yield and the TED spread, I assess the effectiveness of Fed measures to mitigate repo market instability. Using multiple breakpoint Bai-Perron regression and Markov Switching tests, I find that these …

Investing In Low-Trust Countries: On The Role Of Social Trust In The Global Mutual Fund Industry, Massimo Massa, Chengwei Wang, Hong Zhang, Jian Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We hypothesize that social trust, in mitigating contracting incompleteness, may have an important effect on the activeness and effectiveness of delegated portfolio management. Using a complete sample of worldwide open-end mutual funds, we find that trust is positively associated with the activeness of funds and that trust-related active share delivers superior performance (e.g., approximately 2% per year for cross-border investments). Moreover, "trust in the market" and "trust in managers" play important yet different roles for different types of cross-border delegated portfolio management. Our results suggest that trust acts as a fundamental building block for delegated portfolio management.

Nonignorable Missing Data, Single Index Propensity Score And Profile Synthetic Distribution Function, Xuerong Chen, Denis H. Y. Leung, Jing Qin

Research Collection School Of Economics

In missing data problems, missing not at random is difficult to handle since the response probability or propensity score is confounded with the outcome data model in the likelihood. Existing works often assume the propensity score is known up to a finite dimensional parameter. We relax this assumption and consider an unspecified single index model for the propensity score. A pseudo-likelihood based on the complete data is constructed by profiling out a synthetic distribution function that involves the unknown propensity score. The pseudo-likelihood gives asymptotically normal estimates. Simulations show the method compares favorably with existing methods.

Short Selling Etfs, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide novel evidence that arbitrageurs use exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an avenue to circumvent short-sale constraints at the stock level. Using a large sample of U.S. equity ETF holdings, we document that shorting activity on ETFs rises with the difficulty of shorting underlying stocks. Stocks heavily shorted via their holding ETFs underperform those that are lightly shorted. The return predictability of ETF shorting is distinct from stock-level shorting measures and is concentrated among stocks that face severe arbitrage constraints. These findings suggest that ETFs allow arbitrageurs to target overpriced stocks that are otherwise difficult to short.

Subjective Wellbeing And Intergenerational Mobility Of Youths In Singapore, Kong Weng Ho, Solomon Soh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Singapore has been enjoying persistently high real growth rates for the past 6 decades. On average, real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown from S$5603 in 1961 to S$88991 in 2019 with an average annual real per capita growth rate of 4.88%. The mean number of years of schooling for residents aged 25 and over has increased from 3.1 (Barro & Lee, 2001) in 1960 to 11.2 in 2019 while the life expectancy at birth for residents has also increased from 62.9 years in 1960 to 83.6 in 2019 (Department of Statistics, 2019). Although these figures reflect trneds …

Short-Term Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumption Spending And Its Underlying Mechanisms: Evidence From Singapore, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh, Xuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the short-term impact of COVID-19 on consumption spending and labor market outcomes. Using monthly panel data of individuals mainly aged 50–70 in Singapore, we find that COVID-19 reduced consumption spending and labor market outcomes immediately after its outbreak, and its negative impact quickly evolved. At its peak, the pandemic reduced total household consumption spending by 22.8% and labor income by 5.9% in April. Probability of full-time work also went down by 1.2 pp and 6.0 pp in April and May, respectively, but employment and self-employment were only mildly affected. Our heterogeneity analysis indicates that the reduction in consumption …

Heterogeneous Health Effects Of Medical Marijuana Legalization: Evidence From Young Adults In The United States, Junxing Chay, Seonghoon Kim

Research Collection School Of Economics

Legalizing marijuana for medical purposes is a longstanding debate. However, evidence of marijuana's health effects is limited, especially for young adults. We estimate the health impacts of medical marijuana laws (MML) in the U.S. among young adults aged 18–29 years using the difference-in-differences method and data from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System. We find that having MMLs with strict regulations generate health gains, but not in states with lax regulations. Our heterogeneity analysis results indicate that individuals with lower education attainments, with lower household income and without access to health insurance coverage gain more health benefits from MML with …

A Panel Clustering Approach To Analyzing Bubble Behavior, Yanbo Liu, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study provides new mechanisms for identifying and estimating explosive bubbles in mixed-root panel autoregressions with a latent group structure. A post-clustering approach is employed that combines a recursive k-means clustering al-gorithm with panel-data test statistics for testing the presence of explosive roots in time series trajectories. Uniform consistency of the k-means clustering algorithm is established, showing that the post-clustering estimate is asymptotically equivalent to the oracle counterpart that uses the true group identities. Based on the estimated group membership, right-tailed self-normalized t-tests and coefficient-based J-tests, each with pivotal limit distributions, are introduced to detect the explosive roots. The usual …

How Receiving A Pell Grant Affects Students’ Work Hours, Michael S. Kofoed

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Increased Access To Mail-In And Absentee Voting Due To Covid-19 On Voter Turnout In The 2020 Presidential Election, Irene Catlin Hedeman

Undergraduate Economic Review

With new voting policies in the fallout from the 2020 election, it is critical to understand their effects on voter turnout. I use a difference-in-differences approach to study effects of absentee voting policies from the fall of 2020 on voter turnout in four states. Using county-level data on the 2008-2020 presidential elections, I estimate turnout based on the county’s policy for the 2020 election. I use three sets of states, and I find positive effects on voter turnout for all three sets, two of which are significant. The results from the Montana policy hold through the robustness checks.

The Rise Of Community-Based Natural Resource Management Strategies As Explained By Transaction Costs, Keely A. Fisher, Marc R. Donnelly, Collin Adams

Undergraduate Economic Review

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is favored over its predecessor, the fortress approach, for common pool resource (CPR) management. We strive to identify variables associated with successful CBNRM programs, and analyze whether their presence transaction costs can explain the shift in favored conservation strategy. By examining nine case studies of large mammals in Africa, we found that out of eight variables, moderate monitoring and adequate program incentives were the most critical various factors in determining CBNRM program outcomes. Furthermore, these variables, as well as others, contributed to a decrease in transaction costs.

The Impact Of Democracy On Economic Growth In South Asia, Rijul Alvan Das, Siddharth --

Undergraduate Economic Review

One of the most fundamental themes that combine the disciplines of political science and economics is the role played by democracy in the economic growth of a country. Does democracy accelerate or hinder growth? The literature is divided on this topic with both sides presenting strong empirical and theoretical views. This paper studies this issue in the context of South Asia. Our theoretical framework brings out the key characteristics that are often highlighted in both sides of the intellectual debate. Using econometric methods and tools such as Pooled, Fixed and Random Effects estimates, we aim to study the relationship between …

Covid-19, Vaccines, And Decision Theory, Michael A. Lewis

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this piece, I delve into some thoughts I've had about decision theory. These have been inspired by the vaccine rollout phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic. I focus on decision making under uncertainty, as it relates to the decision to get vaccinated or not.

The Effect Of Covid-19 On The Performance Of Listed Firms: Do The Governments’ Policies And Vaccination Rates Play A Role? Evidence From Countries In The Middle East And North Africa, Mofida El Bassioni

Theses and Dissertations

This study uses a quantitative approach to estimate the empirical results of COVID-19, stringency index, and vaccination rates on the stock returns of Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE. Additionally, the researcher included firm-specific variables such as liquidity and leverage, total capital, employees, and date of incorporation. Total capital and employees were used as proxies for company size and for whether the firm is capital intensive or not, while date of incorporation was used as a proxy for company age. Additionally, the researcher created interaction strings between COVID-19 cases and stringency index, COVID- 19 cases and …

Waqf Fund Management Through Micro Waqf Bank Program In Indonesia, Fachry Ganiardi Danuwijaya, Nurwahidin M.Ag

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Waqf is a muamalah activity that has a very important economic and social role in Islamic history. Waqf is one of solutions to the problem of poverty and social inequality in society. The establishment of the Micro Waqf Bank initiated by the government together with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) has played an important role as one of the new Islamic microfinance institutions in financial inclusion in Indonesia. This paper will discuss how the management of waqf funds through the Islamic Waqf Bank program based on pesantren in efforts to alleviate poverty and social inequality which has become a chronic …

Vector Autoregression Analysis Of The Relationship Between Inflation Rate, Interest Rate, And Exchange Rate To The Jakarta Islamic Index, Ajeng Qurrota A'Yun, Nur Fatwa

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

ABSTRACT

The Indonesian Sharia Capital Market is an interesting thing to study because based on the 2019 Global Islamic Finance Report (GIFR) report, Indonesia is ranked first in the Global Sharia Financial Market. The Jakarta Islamic Index (JII) is the sharia stock index that was first launched on the Indonesian capital market on July 3, 2000 and only consisted of the 30 most liquid Islamic shares listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. This study will try to uncover how the relationship between macroeconomic variables in Indonesia by using Vector Autoregression (VAR) analysis and using monthly secondary data from 2012-2019. VAR …

A Gravity Model Analysis Of Actual Potential Egyptian Trade With North And South Trading Partners, Christiane Galil Abou-Lehaf

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Cryptocurrency, Decentralized Finance, And The Evolution Of Money: A Transaction Costs Approach, James L. Caton Jr, Cameron Harwick

Journal of New Finance

We leverage a transaction costs narrative to provide a theoretically unified presentation of the evolution of exchange, with the latest evolutionary frontier being cryptocurrency and decentralized finance. We show that with each new development in the evolution of money, the new form or medium of exchange must reduce transaction costs relative to relevant alternatives. The development of blockchain and cryptocurrency reduced the cost of transferring currency by removing the need for a trusted third party to intermediate funds while also providing the benefit of anonymity/pseudonymity. Likewise, decentralized finance does not require a third party to intermediate savings and investment and …

Place-Based Consequences Of Person-Based Transfers, Brad J. Hershbein, Bryan A. Stuart

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Place-Based Consequences Of Person-Based Transfers: Evidence From Recessions, Brad J. Hershbein, Bryan A. Stuart

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper studies how government transfers respond to changes in local economic activity that emerge during recessions. Local labor markets that experience greater employment losses during recessions face persistent relative decreases in earnings per capita. However, these areas also experience persistent increases in transfers per capita, which offset 16 percent of the earnings loss on average. The increase in transfers is driven by unemployment insurance in the short run, and medical, retirement, and disability transfers in the long run. Our results show that nominally place-neutral transfer programs redistribute considerable sums of money to places with depressed economic conditions.