Economics Commons^™

Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study whether abstract thinking – an essential cognitive trait established by psychological and neuroscientific studies – facilitates analysts’ information processing. Exploiting analysts’ questions during earnings calls, we construct an Abstract Thinking Index (ATI) that measures their tendency to involve abstract words, logical reasoning, broader topics, and future outlooks. We find that abstract thinking improves analysts’ forecast accuracy and recommendation informativeness. Consistent with abstract thinking featuring identifying central characteristics and comprehending intangible things, ATI has stronger effects for firms with fundamentals co-moving more with peers and less tangible information. Additional analyses suggest that ATI captures analysts’ cognitive traits rather than …

How To Understand China's Approach To Central Bank Digital Currency?, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

China's central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital yuan or e-CNY, is likely to profoundly affect the international financial system. China's CBDC is fast evolving. Understanding the influencing factors of China's CBDC will likely be crucial to explore its future direction. Major influencing factors include (i) China's perception and conception of regulation and technology, (ii) complementarity between China's preferences and CBDC development, (iii) domestic and international legitimacy, and (iv) institutional development. This paper argues that these influencing factors contribute to China's likely approach of selectively reshaping the international financial system. Given the potential wide-ranging implications of the introduction of CBDC globally, …

Self-Financing, Parental Transfer, And College Education, Jungho Lee, Sunha Myong

Research Collection School Of Economics

We show that financial constraints can affect the human capital accumulation of college students by influencing students’ labor supply. We document that many college students work a substantial number of hours at low-skill jobs, and students who have fewer financial resources (in particular, parental transfer) tend to work more. We develop a model that incorporates college students’ labor supply and its interaction with parental transfer in the presence of financial constraints. By estimating the model, we quantify the trade-off between self-financing and human capital accumulation and discuss the implications of a wage subsidy policy.

What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We offer a parsimonious index at the individual analyst level to measure the extent to which an analyst relies on earnings and long-term growth forecasts in producing her advice. Using this index, we evaluate the contribution of earnings and growth forecasts to the investment value of analysts’ stock recommendations. We find that the fraction of analysts’ advice attributed to forecasts varies considerably across analysts and sectors. The investment value of recommendations is higher for analysts who rely less on their forecasts and more on other sources of information when forming investment advice. Investors recognize the superiority of recommendations from analysts …

Interim Rationalizable Implementation Of Functions, Takashi Kunimoto, Rene Saran, Roberto Serrano

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates rationalizable implementation of social choice functions (SCFs) in incomplete information environments. We identify weak interim rationalizable monotonicity (weak IRM) as a novel condition and show it to be a necessary and almost sufficient condition for rationalizable implementation. We show by means of robust examples that interim rationalizable monotonicity (IRM), found in the literature, is strictly stronger than weak IRM and that IRM is not necessary for rationalizable implementation, as had been previously claimed. These examples also demonstrate that Bayesian monotonicity, the key condition for full Bayesian implementation, is not necessary for rationalizable implementation. That is, rationalizable implementation …

Housing Fever In Australia 2020-23: Insights From An Econometric Thermometer, Shuping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

Australian housing markets experienced widespread and, in some cases, extraordinary growth in prices between 2020 and 2023. Using recently developed methodology that accounts for fundamental economic drivers, we assess the existence and degree of speculative behaviour, as well as the timing of exuberance and downturns in these markets. Our findings indicate that speculative behaviour was indeed present in six of the eight capital cities at some time over the period studied. The sequence of events in this nation-wide housing bubble began in the Brisbane market and concluded in Melbourne, Canberra, and Hobart following the interest rate rise implemented by the …

Rental Housing Spot Markets: How Online Information Exchanges Can Supplement Transacted-Rents Data, Geoff Boeing, Jake Wegmann, Junfeng Jiao

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Traditional U.S. rental housing data sources such as the American Community Survey and the American Housing Survey report on the transacted market—what existing renters pay each month. They do not explicitly tell us about the spot market—that is, the asking rents that current homeseekers must pay to acquire housing—though they are routinely used as a proxy. This study compares governmental data to millions of contemporaneous rental listings and finds that asking rents diverge substantially from these most recent estimates. Conventional housing data understate current market conditions and affordability challenges, especially in cities with tight and expensive rental markets.

Common Bubble Detection In Large Dimensional Financial Systems, Ye Chen, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shuping Shi

Research Collection School Of Economics

Price bubbles in multiple assets are sometimes nearly coincident in occurrence. Such near-coincidence is strongly suggestive of co-movement in the associated asset prices and is likely driven by certain factors that are latent in the financial or economic system with common effects across several markets. Can we detect the presence of such common factors at the early stages of their emergence? To answer this question, we build a factor model that includes I(1), mildly explosive, and stationary factors to capture normal, exuberant, and collapsing phases in such phenomena. The I(1) factor models the primary driving force of market fundamentals. The …

Spatial Disaggregation Of Poverty And Disability: Application To Tanzania, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Estimating poverty measures for disabled people in developing countries is often difficult, partly because relevant data are not readily available. We extend the small-area estimation developed by Elbers, Lanjouw and Lanjouw (2002, 2003) to estimate poverty by the disability status of the household head, when the disability status is unavailable in the survey. We propose two alternative approaches to this extension: Aggregation and Instrumental Variables Approaches. We apply these approaches to data from Tanzania and show that both approaches work. Our estimation results show that disability is indeed positively associated with poverty in every region of mainland Tanzania.

Does Fertility Matter For Middle Aged And Older Adults’ Risk Attitudes?, Christine Ho, Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, Joanne Tan, Eugene Rui Le Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

Given that risk attitudes influence many decisions, it is important to understand the factors that shape such attitudes in late adulthood, when individuals face important risky decisions. While research finds that parenthood tends to correlate with lower risk tolerance in western countries, there is a lacuna on whether such associations persist in late adulthood, and are applicable to the Asian context, where children are conventionally considered a linchpin of old age support. Data for middle aged and older individuals come from the nationwide Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,740). Multivariate statistical analyses are employed to estimate the associations between willingness …

Search Models Of Money: Alternative Means-Of Payment And Consumer Behaviour With Credit, Kheng Tat Marcus Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three chapters on Search Models of Money.

The first chapter is a review of recent advances in Search Models of Money. It reviews the Lagos and Wright (2005) framework which is the workhorse of many modern search models with applications to models with Competing Media of Exchange to Fiat Currency, and models with Money and Credit. We trace the history of the development of search models of money from the first generation to present day. We highlight recent developments that address puzzles such as the coexistence of money in an environment where an asset serves as …

Navigating Investor Expectations, Yong Hsin Ning, Yvette Lim

Asian Management Insights

Why start-ups need to speak the language of numbers.

Where The World Is Heading In 2023 And Beyond, Simon Baptist

Asian Management Insights

The global economy is showing resilience, despite strong headwinds. Geopolitical uncertainty remains high, while the mounting threats from climate change call for more urgent global action.

Volatility Puzzle: Long Memory Or Anti-Persistency, Shuping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The log realized volatility (RV) is often modeled as an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average model ARFIMA(1,d,01,d,0). Two conflicting empirical results have been found in the literature. One stream shows that log RV has a long memory (i.e., the fractional parameter d > 0). The other stream suggests that the autoregressive coefficient α is near unity with antipersistent errors (i.e., d α close to 0 and d close to 0.5) from Model 2Model 2 (ARFIMA(1,d,01,d,0) with α close to unity and d close to –0.5). An intuitive explanation is given. For the 10 financial assets considered, despite that no definitive conclusions …

Investment And The Long Swings Of Unemployment, Hian Teck Hoon, Margarita Katsimi, Gylfi Zoega

Research Collection School Of Economics

We estimate the medium-term relationship between investment and unemployment over the period 1960–2017 in 20 OECD countries, a period that includes the years of the Great Recession. While neoclassical growth theory typically assumes full employment—with no effect of investment on unemployment—and New-Keynesian models assume that such a relationship only exists in the short term at business cycle frequencies, we find that over our sample period covering more than 5 decades, a statistically significant negative relationship does exist: in decades when investment fell, unemployment increased. Panel estimation, using a measure of stock market volatility as an instrument for investment, confirms the …

Bootstrapping Two-Stage Quasi-Maximum Likelihood Estimators Of Time Series Models, Sílvia Gonçalves, Ulrich Hounyo, Andrew John Patton, Kevin Sheppard

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article provides results on the validity of bootstrap inference methods for two-stage quasi-maximum likelihood estimation involving time series data, such as those used for multivariate volatility models or copula-based models. Existing approaches require the researcher to compute and combine many first- and second-order derivatives, which can be difficult to do and is susceptible to error. Bootstrap methods are simpler to apply, allowing the substitution of capital (CPU cycles) for labor (keeping track of derivatives). We show the consistency of the bootstrap distribution and consistency of bootstrap variance estimators, thereby justifying the use of bootstrap percentile intervals and bootstrap standard …

Multivariate Stochastic Volatility Models Based On Generalized Fisher Transformation, Han Chen, Yijie Fei, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Modeling multivariate stochastic volatility (MSV) can be challenging, particularly when both variances and covariances are time-varying. In this paper, we address these challenges by introducing a new MSV model based on the generalized Fisher transformation of Archakov and Hansen (2021). Our model is highly exible and ensures that the variance-covariance matrix is always positive-definite. Moreover, our approach separates the driving factors of volatilities and correlations. To conduct Bayesian analysis of the model, we use a Particle Gibbs Ancestor Sampling (PGAS) method, which facilitates Bayesian model comparison. We also extend our MSV model to cover the leverage effect in volatilities and …

Young Women In Cities, Yumi Koh, Jing Li, Yifan Wu, Junjian Yi, Hanzhe Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Young women outnumber young men in cities in many countries during periods of economic growth and urbanization. This gender imbalance among young urbanites is more pronounced in larger cities. We use the gradual rollout of special economic zones across China as a quasi-experiment to establish the causes of this gender imbalance. Our analysis suggests that a key contributor is gender-differential incentives to migrate due to rural women’s higher likelihood of marrying and marrying up in cities when urbanization creates more economic opportunities and an abundance of high-income marriage-age men.

The Importance Of The First Generic Substitution: Evidence From Sweden, Aljoscha Janssen, David Granlund

Research Collection School Of Economics

We analyze changes in the willingness to substitute from prescribed pharmaceuticals to more affordable generic equivalents in response to the first experience with a substitution. Using Swedish individual-level data of prescribed and dispensed pharmaceuticals, we em-ploy a dynamic event study and an instrumental variable approach to show that an initial substitution reduces the probability of opposing subsequent substitutions by 39 percent-age points. We recommend that policy-makers target patients with a history of opposed substitution and offer additional discounts to promote substitution as long-term savings outweigh one-time costs.

The Impact Of Upzoning On Housing Construction In Auckland*, Ryan Greenaway-Mcgrevy, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

There is a growing debate about whether upzoning is an effective policy response to housing shortages and unaffordable housing. This paper provides empirical evidence to further inform debate by examining the various impacts of recently implemented zoning reforms on housing construction in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area in New Zealand. In 2016, the city upzoned approximately three quarters of its residential land to facilitate construction of more intensive housing. We use a quasi-experimental approach to analyze the short-run impacts of the reform on construction, allowing for potential shifts in construction from non-upzoned to upzoned areas (displacement effects) that would, if …

Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Developing an excellent quantitative trading strategy to obtain a high Sharpe ratio requires optimizing several parameters at the same time. Example parameters include the window length of a moving average sequence, the choice of trading instruments, and the thresholds used to generate trading signals. Simultaneously optimizing all these parameters to seek a high Sharpe ratio is a daunting and time-consuming task, partly because of the unknown mechanism determining the Sharpe ratio. This article proposes using Bayesian optimization to systematically search for the optimal parameter configuration that leads to a high Sharpe ratio. The author shows that the proposed intelligent search …

An Empirical Research On The Financial Distress Risk In The Garden And Construction Industry, Jianlin Guan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In recent years, the garden and construction industry has faced significant financial distressdue to the downward pressure on the macro economy. This financial distress not onlyposesrisks to the financial stability and management of enterprises but also has far-reachingimpactson society.

This paper utilizes various analytical methods such as case analysis, empirical analysis, andevent analysis to derive the following conclusions:(1)The participation of garden constructionindustry enterprises in public-private partnership (PPP) projects leads to increased financial distress.(2)The higher the debt ratio of the local government where listed gardenandconstruction enterprises are located, the greater the financial distress theyexperience.(3)Enterprises in the garden and construction industry, whose …

Heterogeneity In The Persistence Of Health: Evidence From A Monthly Micro Panel, Stephen Hoskins, David W. Joohnston, Johannes S. Kunz, Michael A. Shields, Kevin E. Staub

ROSA Journal Articles and Publications

Despite being widely used in health economics, dynamic models of health and healthcare typ ically assume that the persistence in these outcomes is the same for every individual. This paper explores individual-level heterogeneity in the persistence of health outcomes. Using simple re gression methods that do not place any restriction on the distribution of the heterogeneity in persistence, the paper documents substantial heterogeneity in health, medical expenditures, and healthcare use. We show that neglecting this heterogeneity leads to estimates that overstate the average persistence and can bias the coefficients of covariates. We find that between 75% and 87% of individuals …

Essays On Stakeholder Economy, Hanyu Zhang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The dissertation consists of two chapters on stakeholder economy. It looks at how firms interact with the stakeholders, including not only investors, employees, customers, governments, but also the broader community and society at large, and examines how such interactions affect corporate behavior in China and the global setting. The first chapter studies how societal culture shapes firm behavior and growth by analyzing the trade-off of relying on trust in acquiring stakeholder resources, and testing with data on the number of historic Confucian schools surrounding a current firm’s location in China. Companies more exposed to Confucianism have greater social contributions and …

Essays On Culture, Institutions, And Development, Meng Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study culture, institutions, and economic development. In the first chapter, we study the impact of Confucianism on long-run development in northern Vietnam. Using the variation in Confucian literati across 217 historical districts between the Primitive Le and Nguyen dynasties (1426 CE - 1919 CE), we find that districts with greater exposure to Confucianism have experienced better economic outcomes over the past century. The result is robust to using the distance to exogenously located hermit Confucian as an instrument and accounting for a battery of confounders. We show that the positive effects of Confucianism …

The Livingston Survey 2023, S. Anderson, B. Bovino, M. Brown, Thomas Lam, Et Al

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The 15 participants in the June Livingston Survey predict higher output growth for the first half of 2023 than they predicted in the December 2022 survey. The forecasters, who are surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia twice a year, now project that the economy’s output (real GDP) will grow at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the first half of 2023. They expect weaker conditions in the second half of 2023, when growth is expected to be at an annual rate of -0.7 percent. Both projections represent upward revisions from those of the December 2022 survey. Growth …

Is Democracy Good For Growth? Development At Political Transition Time Matters, Di Sima, Fali Huang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Is democracy a better political regime for economic prosperity than autocracy? This paper shows that the answer depends on the initial economic development level during the democratic transition when the foundation of institutions was laid. Democracy facilitates growth only in countries that already have adequate development at transition time. These countries are more likely to create and sustain growth-enhancing institutions than others. Without appropriate development, democracy does not improve growth; this applies to about 40% of the third-wave democratized countries. These results are based on a sample of 153 countries in 1960–2010 and robust to various specifications and endogeneity issues.

Brothers, Sisters, And Support To Older Parents: Separate Spheres Across And Within Support Types?, Christine Ho, Kathleen Mcgarry

Research Collection School Of Economics

Parents in many countries exhibit a strong preference for sons over daughters; a preference that is often observed regarding transfers to children. Here, we ask whether son preference also drives differences in behavior regarding transfers from sons and daughters. We use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to examine the patterns of giving to parents and find strong evidence of such differentiation. Coresidential support comes almost exclusively from sons as do large transfers, while daughters are more likely to make small transfers. Moreover, crowding-out of financial transfers by siblings occurs primarily within gender: sons give less …

Disagreement In Market Index Options, Guilherme Salome, George Tauchen, Jia Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

We generate new evidence on disagreement among traders in the S&P 500 options market from high-frequency intraday price and volume data. Inference on disagreement is based on a model where investors observe public information but agree to disagree on its interpretation; disagreement among investors is captured by the volume–volatility elasticity. For options, there are two natural variables related to disagreement: moneyness and tenor, which we relate to disagreement about the distribution of the market index at different quantiles and times. The estimated volume–volatility elasticity equals unity for options near the money and close to expiration, which is consistent with the …

Regression-Adjusted Estimation Of Quantile Treatment Effects Under Covariate-Adaptive Randomizations, Liang Jiang, Peter C. B. Phillips, Yubo Tao, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Datasets from field experiments with covariate-adaptive randomizations (CARs) usually contain extra covariates in addition to the strata indicators. We propose to incorporate these additional covariates via auxiliary regressions in the estimation and inference of unconditional quantile treatment effects (QTEs) under CARs. We establish the consistency and limit distribution of the regression-adjusted QTE estimator and prove that the use of multiplier bootstrap inference is non-conservative under CARs. The auxiliary regression may be estimated parametrically, nonparametrically, or via regularization when the data are high-dimensional. Even when the auxiliary regression is misspecified, the proposed bootstrap inferential procedure still achieves the nominal rejection probability …