Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Economics Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Singapore Management University

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type

Articles 1711 - 1740 of 2456

Full-Text Articles in Economics

Non-Parametric Regression Under Location Shifts, Peter C. B. Phillips, Liangjun Su Oct 2011

Non-Parametric Regression Under Location Shifts, Peter C. B. Phillips, Liangjun Su

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recent work by Wang and Phillips (2009b, 2011) has shown that ill-posed inverse problems do not arise in non-stationary non-parametric regression and there is no need for non-parametric instrumental variable estimation. Instead, simple Nadaraya–Watson non-parametric estimation of a cointegrating regression equation is consistent irrespective of the endogeneity in the regressor. The present paper shows that some closely related results apply in the case of structural non-parametric regression with independent data when there are continuous location shifts in the regressor. Some interesting cases are discovered where non-parametric regression is consistent, whereas parametric regression is inconsistent even when the true regression functional …

Go to article

Tilted Nonparametric Estimation Of Volatility Functions With Empirical Applications, Ke-Li Xu, Peter C. B. Phillips Oct 2011

Tilted Nonparametric Estimation Of Volatility Functions With Empirical Applications, Ke-Li Xu, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article proposes a novel positive nonparametric estimator of the conditional variance function without reliance on logarithmic or other transformations. The estimator is based on an empirical likelihood modification of conventional local-level nonparametric regression applied to squared residuals of the mean regression. The estimator is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to the local linear estimator in the case of unbounded support but, unlike that estimator, is restricted to be nonnegative in finite samples. It is fully adaptive to the unknown conditional mean function. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the finite-sample performance of the estimator. Two empirical applications are reported. One …

Go to article

The Informal Economy And Bribery In North Korea, Byung-Yeon Kim, Yumi Koh Oct 2011

The Informal Economy And Bribery In North Korea, Byung-Yeon Kim, Yumi Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper uses the data of 227 North Korean refugees who have settled in South Korea to investigate the relationship between working in the informal economy (market component of the economy) and bribe-giving, and between bribe-giving and the number of hours worked in the formal sector (planned component of the economy). The first relationship is positive, and the second relationship is negative. These results imply that widespread informal economy activities in North Korea have been undermining the socialist regime through bribery.

Go to article

Family Background And Economic Outcomes In Japan, Ken Yamada Oct 2011

Family Background And Economic Outcomes In Japan, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

There has been increasing concern about the influence of elements of family background on children’s future outcomes in Japan. This paper empirically examines the long-term impact of family background, including sibling composition and parental attributes, and reveals how these elements of Japanese women’s family backgrounds affect their educational attainment and investment, labor market outcomes, family formation, and spousal characteristics.

Go to article

How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Singapore Management University Sep 2011

How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Just three years after the 2008 global financial crisis, the world wonders, yet again, if another global downturn might be looming.

Go to article

The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee Sep 2011

The Wto Trade Effect, Pao Li Chang, Myoung-Jae Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper re-examines the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification bias, allows general forms of heterogeneous membership effects, and addresses potential hidden selection bias. This is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue. Our results suggest large GATT/WTO trade-promoting effects that are robust to various restricted matching criteria, alternative GATT/WTO indicators, non-random incidence of positive trade flows, inclusion of multilateral resistance terms, and different matching methodologies.

Go to article

Money, Bargaining, And Risk Sharing, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan Sep 2011

Money, Bargaining, And Risk Sharing, Nicolas L. Jacquet, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the dual role of money as a self-insurance device and a means of payment when perfect risk sharing is not possible, and when the two roles of money are disentangled. We use a variant of Lagos–Wright (2005) where agents face a risk in the centralized market (CM): in the decentralized market (DM) money’s main role is as a means of payment, while in the CM it is as a self-insurance device. We show that state-contingent inflation rates can improve agents’ ability to self-insure in the CM, thereby improving the terms of trade in the DM. We then characterize …

Go to article

Grey Market For Indian Ipos: Investor Sentiment And After-Market Performance, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Tiong Yang Thong, Vishwanath Ramanna Aug 2011

Grey Market For Indian Ipos: Investor Sentiment And After-Market Performance, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Tiong Yang Thong, Vishwanath Ramanna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment is a prominent feature in IPO grey markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the working of the Indian IPO market. We consider this work interesting and relevant for the following reasons. First, grey market trading always involves short-selling as securities are not yet available. Since legal and institutional environment is less developed in emerging markets, the functioning of grey markets is of interest to policy makers and financial economists. Second, retail investors participate to a greater extent in IPOs of …

Go to article

The Singapore Town-Hall Meeting, Tan K. B. Eugene Aug 2011

The Singapore Town-Hall Meeting, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Professor Eugene Tan forecasts what the Prime Minister might say in his National Day Rally speech. He predicts it will touch on the ecomomy, Presidential election and social cohesion, among other issues.

Go to article

Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Latent Diffusion Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug Aug 2011

Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Latent Diffusion Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper a method is developed and implemented to provide the simulated maximum likelihood estimation of latent diffusions based on discrete data. The method is applicable to diffusions that either have latent elements in the state vector or are only observed at discrete time with a noise. Latent diffusions are very important in practical applications in financial economics. The proposed approach synthesizes the closed form method of Ait-Sahalia (2008) and the efficient importance sampler of Richard and Zhang (2007). It does not require any infill observations to be introduced and hence is computationally tractable. The Monte Carlo study shows …

Go to article

Labor Supply Responses To The 1990s Japanese Tax Reforms, Ken Yamada Aug 2011

Labor Supply Responses To The 1990s Japanese Tax Reforms, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.

Go to article

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu Aug 2011

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper incorporates risk into the FDI decisions of firms. The risk of FDI failure increases with the gap between the South's technology frontier and the technology complexity of a firm's product. This leads to a double-crossing sorting pattern of FDI firms of intermediate technology levels are more likely than others to undertake FDI. It is with the attempt to relax the upper bound of the technology content of FDI, we argue, that many FDI policies are created. The theory's predictions are consistent with the empirical pattern of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

Go to article

Testing For Multiple Bubbles, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu Aug 2011

Testing For Multiple Bubbles, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Identifying explosive bubbles that are characterized by periodically collapsing behavior over time has been a major concern in the literature and is of great importance for practitioners. The complexity of the nonlinear structure in multiple bubble phenomena diminishes the discriminatory power of existing tests, as evidenced in early simulations conducted by Evans (1991). Multiple collapsing bubble episodes within the same sample period make bubble diagnosis particularly difficult and complicate attempts at econometric dating. The present paper systematically investigates these issues and develops new procedures for practical implementation and surveillance strategies by central banks. We show how the testing procedure and …

Go to article

Bayesian Hypothesis Testing In Latent Variable Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu Aug 2011

Bayesian Hypothesis Testing In Latent Variable Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Hypothesis testing using Bayes factors (BFs) is known not to be well defined under the improper prior. In the context of latent variable models, an additional problem with BFs is that they are difficult to compute. In this paper, a new Bayesian method, based on decision theory and the EM algorithm, is introduced to test a point hypothesis in latent variable models. The new statistic is a by-product of the Bayesian MCMC output and, hence, easy to compute. It is shown that the new statistic is easy to interpret and appropriately defined under improper priors because the method employs a …

Go to article

Specification Sensitivities In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing, Shu-Ping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Aug 2011

Specification Sensitivities In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing, Shu-Ping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under different hypotheses and model specifications. The …

Go to article

Quenching Thirst Through Policy And Planning, Knowledge@Smu Jul 2011

Quenching Thirst Through Policy And Planning, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Water is fundamental to human survival. Yet, for many people in the world, clean water may not necessarily come as easy as simply turning the tap. It is estimated that some 20 percent of the world's population do not have access to water – a reality not perpetuated by a lack of water, but rather, ineffective policies and politicians. Speaking at a SMU Social Sciences seminar, Eduardo Araral shares the story of how a city overcame the odds to supply clean water to its masses.

Go to article

Crowding-Out Effect Of The Current Food Stamp Subsidy Scheme, Yi Zhang Jul 2011

Crowding-Out Effect Of The Current Food Stamp Subsidy Scheme, Yi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We construct a model to illustrate that the current food stamp subsidy scheme fails to achieve its stated aim due to the crowding-out effect. More specifically, if the household income is sufficiently low, only a corner solution exists, and a full subsidy is needed.

Go to article

Sme Inc: Corporate Success And Social Good, Paul Lim, Brendan Barrett, Nils Steinbrecher, Tomoki Fujii, Ted Tschang, Lieven Demeester Jul 2011

Sme Inc: Corporate Success And Social Good, Paul Lim, Brendan Barrett, Nils Steinbrecher, Tomoki Fujii, Ted Tschang, Lieven Demeester

Research Collection School Of Economics

Panel of experts share their views ranging from the definition of sustainable business to how governments should lead by example.

Go to article

Growth, Opportunity, And Inequality: Some Empirics From Singapore, Kong Weng Ho Jul 2011

Growth, Opportunity, And Inequality: Some Empirics From Singapore, Kong Weng Ho

Research Collection School Of Economics

While the strategy of openness had earned Singapore rapid economic growth, upward social mobility, and possibly decreasing inequality in the early years of development, the more recent years has seen increasing inequality. With this inequality comes an underlying possibly diminished upward inter-generational mobility, due to skill-biased growth processes, skill-biased parental influence, liberalisation in the education industry, and structural changes in the society, which hurt the human capital accumulation of children in families under economic and intra-household stresses. In particular, paternal influence on educational aspirations and attainment is more pronounced than maternal influence. Non-Chinese and youths from disrupted families are worse …

Go to article

A Martingale Approach For Testing Diffusion Models Based On Infinitesimal Operator, Zhaogang Song Jun 2011

A Martingale Approach For Testing Diffusion Models Based On Infinitesimal Operator, Zhaogang Song

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

I develop an omnibus specification test for diffusion models based on the infinitesimal operator. The infinitesimal operator based identification of the diffusion process is equivalent to a “martingale hypothesis” for the processes obtained by a transformation of the original diffusion model. My test procedure is then constructed by checking the “martingale hypothesis” via a multivariate generalized spectral derivative based approach that delivers a  asymptotical null distribution for the test statistic. The infinitesimal operator of the diffusion process is a closed-form function of drift and diffusion terms. Consequently, my test procedure covers both univariate and multivariate diffusion models in a unified …

Go to article

The Implications Of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment On Capital Markets: A Bottom-Up View, David Fernandez Jun 2011

The Implications Of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment On Capital Markets: A Bottom-Up View, David Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The buzz around sovereign wealth funds has been turned down a notch, but they remain a hot topic. The accusations of sovereign wealth funds having hidden agendas remain, but with the very public losses suffered by some during the recent financial turmoil, such talk has even less credibility. And given that most of those losses were from investments in US, UK, and European financial institutions, hope that sovereign wealth funds would be the saviors of Wall Street has also faded. At its base, four trends continue to keep sovereign wealth funds in focus. First, there is the phenomenal rise of …

Go to article

Recent Developments In European Bank Competition, Juliana Yu Sun Jun 2011

Recent Developments In European Bank Competition, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the degree of bank competition in the euro area, the U.S. and U.K. before and after the recent financial crisis, and revisits the issue whether the introduction of EMU and the euro have had any impact on bank competition. The results suggest that the level of bank competition converged across euro area countries in the wake of the EMU. The recent global financial crisis led to a fall in competition in several countries and especially where large credit and housing booms had preceded the crisis...

Go to article

The Use Of Role-Player Prompts In Assessment Center Exercises, Eveline Schollaert, Filip Lievens Jun 2011

The Use Of Role-Player Prompts In Assessment Center Exercises, Eveline Schollaert, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

So far, a substantial amount of assessment center (AC) studies have aimed to improve the quality of the AC method by focusing on the assessors. However, systematic studies about the role-player in AC exercises are nonexistent. This is surprising as the role-player might serve as a key figure for consistently evoking job-relevant behavior across candidates. Therefore, this study focused on the 'role' of role-players in ACs. We examined the effects of instructing role-players to use prompts among 233 candidates. Results suggest that role-players are able to use prompts and that their negative impact on candidates' reactions is negligible. In addition, …

Go to article

Preferences, Prisoners And Private Information: Was Socrates Rational At His Trial?, Brishti Guha Jun 2011

Preferences, Prisoners And Private Information: Was Socrates Rational At His Trial?, Brishti Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Using concepts from game theory, political economy, law and economics and the economics of asymmetric information, we describe the economics of one of the most famous trials in history—that of the Athenian philosopher Socrates. We discuss the question of whether Socrates’ actions during his trial were rational, using two different models. Our analysis sheds some light on institutional efficiency in trials that followed the classical Athenian pattern.

Go to article

Pirates And Traders: Some Economics Of Pirate-Infested Seas, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha May 2011

Pirates And Traders: Some Economics Of Pirate-Infested Seas, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha

Research Collection School Of Economics

Even where all agents are risk-neutral, merchants can insure themselves against piracy. Such self-insurance is surprisingly invulnerable to moral hazard. Further, there exist a patrolling intensity and/or penalties for captured pirates which, along with mercantile self-insurance, could eliminate piracy.

Go to article

Wp Chen's Criticizing Policy That Benefited Him, Augustine H. H. Tan May 2011

Wp Chen's Criticizing Policy That Benefited Him, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Mr Chen Show Mao of the Workers' Party lamented in his speech recently that wages in Singapore are not increasing as fast as the country's gross domestic product growth, highlighting that most of the growth went to corporate profits and wage income for top earners.

Go to article

Dangerous To Draw Down Reserves, Augustine H. H. Tan May 2011

Dangerous To Draw Down Reserves, Augustine H. H. Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

As at the end of last year, our official reserves stood at $288 billion compared to a gross domestic product of $304 billion and bank deposits (domestic bank units or DBU) of $781 billion. In the event of a financial meltdown, the reserves would be far too small to bail out our banks. During the recent global financial crisis I was very anxious for Singapore when the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a guarantee (until end last year) for all our DBU deposits of up to $150 billion.

Go to article

Warning System For Property Bubbles, Jun Yu, Peter C. B. Phillips May 2011

Warning System For Property Bubbles, Jun Yu, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

A commentary on what constitutes a sound system to warn against property bubbles.

Go to article

Instrumental Variable Quantile Estimation Of Spatial Autoregressive Models, Liangjun Su, Zhenlin Yang May 2011

Instrumental Variable Quantile Estimation Of Spatial Autoregressive Models, Liangjun Su, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a spatial quantile autoregression (SQAR) model, which allows cross-sectional dependence among the responses, unknown heteroscedasticity in the disturbances, and heterogeneous impacts of covariates on different points (quantiles) of a response distribution. The instrumental variable quantile regression (IVQR) method of Chernozhukov and Hansen (2006) is generalized to allow the data to be non-identically distributed and dependent, an IVQR estimator for the SQAR model is then defined, and its asymptotic properties are derived. Simulation results show that this estimator performs well in finite samples at various quantile points. In the special case of spatial median regression, it outperforms the conventional …

Go to article

Innovation And Employment, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps Apr 2011

Innovation And Employment, Hian Teck Hoon, Edmund S. Phelps

Research Collection School of Economics

Is employment higher in an economy that has a higher rate of innovation? In Hoon and Phelps (1997), we study this question in the small open, and closed, economy under the assumption that the rate of technological progress is exogenous to the economic system.In this paper, we reexamine this question in the context of a model with endogenous product innovation (and thus endogenous technological progress) and endogenous labor supply first in a small open economy taking the world interest rate as given and then ina closed economy that determines the whole term structure of the interest rate. In our present …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last