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Research Collection School Of Economics

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Full-Text Articles in Economics

An Interview Question That Brought About Some Thoughts, Zhengxiao Wu Sep 2019

An Interview Question That Brought About Some Thoughts, Zhengxiao Wu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We tackle the question posed by journalist Mehdi Hassan – on how many Chinese lives could be lost or would have to be lost to justify a single percentage of economic growth. We considered a utility maximization problem where the utility function is defined to be the sum of the life expectancy at birth for all Chinese nationals.


Estimation And Inference Of Fractional Continuous-Time Model With Discrete-Sampled Data, Xiaohu Wang, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu Sep 2019

Estimation And Inference Of Fractional Continuous-Time Model With Discrete-Sampled Data, Xiaohu Wang, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper proposes a two-stage method for estimating parameters in a para-metric fractional continuous-time model based on discrete-sampled observations. In the first stage, the Hurst parameter is estimated based on the ratio of two second-order differences of observations from different time scales. In the second stage, the other parameters are estimated by the method of moments. All estimators have closed-form expressions and are easy to obtain. A large sample theory of the pro-posed estimators is derived under either the in-fill asymptotic scheme or the double asymptotic scheme. Extensive simulations show that the proposed theory performs well in finite samples. Two …


Strong Consistency Of Spectral Clustering For Stochastic Block Models, Liangjun Su, Wuyi Wang, Yichong Zhang Aug 2019

Strong Consistency Of Spectral Clustering For Stochastic Block Models, Liangjun Su, Wuyi Wang, Yichong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we prove the strong consistency of several methods based on the spectral clustering techniques that are widely used to study the community detection problem in stochastic block models (SBMs). We show that under some weak conditions on the minimal degree, the number of communities, and the eigenvalues of the probability block matrix, the K-means algorithm applied to the eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian associated with its first few largest eigenvalues can classify all individuals into the true community uniformly correctly almost surely. Extensions to both regularized spectral clustering and degree-corrected SBMs are also considered. We illustrate the …


Hypothesis Testing, Specification Testing And Model Selection Based On The Mcmc Output Using R, Yong Li, Jun Yu, Tao Zeng Aug 2019

Hypothesis Testing, Specification Testing And Model Selection Based On The Mcmc Output Using R, Yong Li, Jun Yu, Tao Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

This chapter overviews several MCMC-based test statistics for hypothesis testing andspecification testing and MCMC-based model selection criteria developed in recentyears. The statistics for hypothesis testing can be viewed as the MCMC version ofthe “trinity” of test statistics based in maximum likelihood (ML), namely, the likelihoodratio (LR) test, the Lagrange multiplier (LM) test, and the Wald test. The model selection criteria correspond to two predictive distributions. One of them can be viewed asthe MCMC version of widely used information criterion, AIC. The asymptotic distributions of the test statistics and model selection criteria are discussed. The test statisticsand model selection criteria are …


Equivalence Of Stochastic And Deterministic Mechanisms, Yi-Chun Chen, Jiangtao Li, Jiangtao Li, Yeneng Sun Jul 2019

Equivalence Of Stochastic And Deterministic Mechanisms, Yi-Chun Chen, Jiangtao Li, Jiangtao Li, Yeneng Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We consider a general social choice environment that has multiple agents, a finite set of alternatives, independent types, and atomless type distribution. We show that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism, there exists an equivalent deterministic mechanism that (1) is Bayesian incentive compatible; (2) delivers the same interim expected allocation probabilities and the same interim expected utilities for all agents; and (3) delivers the same ex ante expected social surplus. This result holds in settings with a rich class of utility functions, multidimensional types, interdependent valuations, and in settings without monetary transfers. To prove our result, we develop a novel …


Limit Theory For Moderate Deviation From Integrated Garch Processes, Yubo Tao Jul 2019

Limit Theory For Moderate Deviation From Integrated Garch Processes, Yubo Tao

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops the limit theory of the GARCH(1,1) process that moderately deviates from IGARCH process towards both stationary and explosive regimes. The asymptotic theory extends Berkes et al. (2005) by allowing the parameters to have a slower rate of convergence. The results can be applied to unit root test for processes with mildly-integrated GARCH innovations (e.g. Boswijk (2001), Cavaliere and Taylor (2007, 2009)) and deriving limit theory of estimators for models involving mildly-integrated GARCH processes (e.g. Jensen and Rahbek (2004), Francq and Zakoïan (2012, 2013).


Random Mechanism Design On Multidimensional Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng Jul 2019

Random Mechanism Design On Multidimensional Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study random mechanism design in an environment where the set of alternatives has a Cartesian product structure. We first show that all generalized random dictatorships are strategy-proof on a minimally rich domain if and only if the domain is a top-separable domain. We next generalize the notion of connectedness (Monjardet, 2009) to establish a particular class of top-separable domains: connected domains, and show that in the class of minimally rich and connected domains, the multidimensional single-peakedness restriction is necessary and sufficient for the design of a flexible random social choice function that is unanimous and strategy-proof. Such a flexible …


Improved Marginal Likelihood Estimation Via Power Posteriors And Importance Sampling, Yong Li, Nianling Wang, Jun Yu Jul 2019

Improved Marginal Likelihood Estimation Via Power Posteriors And Importance Sampling, Yong Li, Nianling Wang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The power-posterior method of Friel and Pettitt (2008) has been used to estimate the marginal likelihoods of competing Bayesian models. In this paper it is shown that the Bernstein-von Mises (BvM) theorem holds for the power posteriors under regularity conditions. Due to the BvM theorem, the power posteriors, when adjusted by the square root of the corresponding grid points, converge to the same normal distribution as the original posterior distribution, facilitating the implementation of importance sampling for the purpose of estimating the marginal likelihood. Unlike the power-posterior method that requires repeated posterior sampling from the power posteriors, the new method …


A Quantile-Based Asset Pricing Model, Tomohiro Ando, Jushan Bai, Mitohide Nishimura, Jun Yu Jul 2019

A Quantile-Based Asset Pricing Model, Tomohiro Ando, Jushan Bai, Mitohide Nishimura, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

It is well-known that the standard estimators of the risk premium in asset pricing models are biased when some price factors are omitted. To address this problem, we propose a novel quantile-based asset pricing model and a new estimation method. Our new asset pricing model allows for the risk premium to be quantile-dependent and our estimation method is applicable to models with unobserved factors. It avoids biased estimation results and always ensures a positive risk premium. The method is applied to the U.S., Japan, and U.K. stock markets. The empirical analysis demonstrates the clear benefits of our approach.


Panel Threshold Regressions With Latent Group Structures, Ke Miao, Liangjun Su, Wendun Wang Jul 2019

Panel Threshold Regressions With Latent Group Structures, Ke Miao, Liangjun Su, Wendun Wang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we consider the least squares estimation of a panel structure threshold re-gression (PSTR) model where both the slope coefficients and threshold parameters may exhibit latent group structures. We study the asymptotic properties of the estimators of the latent group structure and the slope and threshold coefficients. We show that we can estimate the latent group structure correctly with probability approaching 1 and the estimators of the slope and threshold coefficients are asymptotically equivalent to the infeasible estimators that are obtained as if the true group structures were known. We study likelihood-ratio-based inferences on the group-specific threshold parameters …


Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou Jun 2019

Marginal Cost Of Risk-Based Capital And Risk-Taking, Tao Chen, Jing Rong Goh, Shinichi Kamiya, Pingyi Lou

Research Collection School Of Economics

We explore the impact of capital adequacy requirements on financial institutions' risk-taking behavior from a novel perspective. Specifically, we show that an important feature of the risk-based capital (RBC) system a built-in diversification benefit in aggregating risk categories induces moral hazard. We find that insurers that face lower marginal RBC costs of fixed-income (FI) investment tend to purchase riskier Fl securities. This relationship holds even when lower marginal RBC costs result from increased risk in other risk categories, which is an unintended consequence of the RBC's square root rule. Using Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as exogenous shocks to the RBC …


Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu Jun 2019

Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.


The Aging Of A Young Nation: Population Aging In Singapore, Rahul Malhotra, Andre M. Muller, Su Aw, Gerald Choon Huat Koh, Yin-Leng Theng, Stephen James Hoskins, Chek Hooi Wong, Chunyan Miao, Wee-Shiong Lim, Chetna Malhotra, Angelique Chan Jun 2019

The Aging Of A Young Nation: Population Aging In Singapore, Rahul Malhotra, Andre M. Muller, Su Aw, Gerald Choon Huat Koh, Yin-Leng Theng, Stephen James Hoskins, Chek Hooi Wong, Chunyan Miao, Wee-Shiong Lim, Chetna Malhotra, Angelique Chan

Research Collection School Of Economics

The juxtaposition of a young city-state showing relative maturity as a rapidly aging society suffuses the population aging narrative in Singapore and places the “little red dot” on the spotlight of international aging. We first describe population aging in Singapore, including the characteristic events that shaped this demographic transition. We then detail the health care and socioeconomic ramifications of the rapid and significant shift to an aging society, followed by an overview of the main aging research areas in Singapore, including selected population-based data sets and the main thrust of leading aging research centers/institutes. After presenting established aging policies and …


Global Value Chains And The Cptpp, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen Jun 2019

Global Value Chains And The Cptpp, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

The CPTPP, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, is an example of a “mega-regional” free trade agreement, whose provisions on the rules of origin and trade facilitation can have potentially large impacts on the CPTPP-wide supply chains. In this paper, we investigate whether the CPTPP members are key upstream and downstream trade partners to each other in the global value chains. We develop formulas of bilateral upstreamness and downstreamness, based on the gross-export decomposition framework of Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) and Borin and Mancini (2017). We demonstrate how the decomposition of gross exports can be used …


A Smoothed Q-Learning Algorithm For Estimating Optimal Dynamic Treatment Regime, Yanqin Fan, Ming He, Liangjun Su, Xiao-Hua Zhou Jun 2019

A Smoothed Q-Learning Algorithm For Estimating Optimal Dynamic Treatment Regime, Yanqin Fan, Ming He, Liangjun Su, Xiao-Hua Zhou

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper we propose a smoothed Q-learning algorithm for estimating optimal dynamic treatment regimes. In contrast to the Q-learning algorithm in which non-regular inference is involved, we show that under assumptions adopted in this paper, the proposed smoothed Q-learning estimator is asymptotically normally distributed even when the Q-learning estimator is not and its asymptotic variance can be consistently estimated. As a result, inference based on the smoothed Q-learning estimator is standard. We derive the optimal smoothing parameter and propose a data-driven method for estimating it. The finite sample properties of the smoothed Q-learning estimator are studied and compared with …


An Improved Bayesian Unit Root Test In Stochastic Volatility Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu May 2019

An Improved Bayesian Unit Root Test In Stochastic Volatility Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new posterior odds analysis is developed to test for a unit root in volatilitydynamics in the context of stochastic volatility models. Our analysis extendsthe Bayesian unit root test of So and Li (1999) in two important ways. First,a mixed informative prior distribution with a random weight is introducedfor the Bayesian unit root testing in volatility. Second, a numerically morestable algorithm is introduced to compute Bayes factor, taking into accountthe special structure of the competing models. It can be shown that theapproach introduced overcomes the problem of the diverging “size” in themarginal likelihood approach by So and Li (1999) and …


Does India's Growth Matter? Evidence From The Saarc Nations, Rohan Ray, Cledwyn Fernandez May 2019

Does India's Growth Matter? Evidence From The Saarc Nations, Rohan Ray, Cledwyn Fernandez

Research Collection School Of Economics

The study estimates the extent of spillover effects that India's real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has on the growth rates of other countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region for the period 2003–2016. It also identifies whether the conventional trade channel is the means through which growth is transmitted from India to her neighboring countries. Using a random effects model, we conclude that on average, a 1 percentage point increase in India's real per capita GDP growth rate results in 0.46 percentage point increase in the per capita GDP growth rates of …


Editorial Introduction To The Special Issue Entitled: Spatial Econometrics: New Methods And Applications, Zhenlin Yang May 2019

Editorial Introduction To The Special Issue Entitled: Spatial Econometrics: New Methods And Applications, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Spatial econometrics is a fast growing research area, with the theories and methods developed over the past five decades or so being applied more and more widely, not only in the specialized fields such as regional science, real estate, economic geography, and urban economics, but also increasingly in the general fields such as economics, finance and social networks, in particular in the recent decade. One of the driving forces is perhaps the formation of the Spatial Econometrics Association (SEA) at Rome in 2006 and its subsequent annul conference started in 2007 at the Cambridge University, which have helped greatly the …


Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Multiplicity Of Equilibria In A Directed Search Model Of The Labor Market, Nicolas L. Jacquet, John Kennes, Serene Tan May 2019

Wage-Vacancy Contracts And Multiplicity Of Equilibria In A Directed Search Model Of The Labor Market, Nicolas L. Jacquet, John Kennes, Serene Tan

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies a directed search model of the labour market, which is standard in all aspects except two. First, we allow firms to post wage–vacancy contracts advertising the number of workers they would pay as well as the payment all will receive. Second, we consider two cases: one where workers are risk neutral and one where workers are risk averse, both in finite and large economies. Our paper shows that when firms post wage–vacancy contracts, whether workers are modelled as risk neutral or risk averse matters: the types of symmetric equilibria and the nature of multiplicity of equilibria are …


Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu May 2019

Housing Equity And Household Consumption In Retirement: Evidence From The Singapore Life Panel, Lipeng Chen, Liang Jiang, Sock Yong Phang, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We utilize data from the Singapore Life Panel© survey to empirically investigate the impact of housing equity on consumption of elderly households. Based on panel analysis, we find housing equity value has no significant impact on non-durable consumption for elderly people. The conclusion holds for a battery of robustness check. Moreover, heterogeneity analyses based on subsamples by age of household head, house type, and number of property possessed also show no significant impact of housing equity on consumption in general. Finally, we use scenario analysis to study the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS), a novel housing equity monetization scheme which allows …


Equal-Quantile Rules In Resource Allocation With Uncertain Needs, Yan Long, Jay Sethuraman, Jingyi Xue May 2019

Equal-Quantile Rules In Resource Allocation With Uncertain Needs, Yan Long, Jay Sethuraman, Jingyi Xue

Research Collection School Of Economics

A group of agents have uncertain needs on a resource, and the resource has to be divided before uncertainty resolves. We propose a class of division rules we call equal-quantile rules, parameterized by λ ∈ (0, 1]. The parameter λ is a common maximal probability of satisfaction — the probability that an agent’s realized need is no more than his assignment — imposed on all agents. Thus, the maximal assignment of each agent is his λ-quantile assignment. If the endowment of the resource exceeds the sum of the agents’ λ-quantile assignments, each agent receives his λ-quantile assignment and the resource …


Jump Factor Models In Large Cross-Sections, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George. Tauchen May 2019

Jump Factor Models In Large Cross-Sections, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George. Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop tests for deciding whether a large cross-section of asset prices obey an exact factor structure at the times of factor jumps. Such jump dependence is implied by standard linear factor models. Our inference is based on a panel of asset returns with asymptotically increasing cross-sectional dimension and sampling frequency, and essentially no restriction on the relative magnitude of these two dimensions of the panel. The test is formed from the high-frequency returns at the times when the risk factors are detected to have a jump. The test statistic is a cross-sectional average of a measure of discrepancy in …


Mixed Bayesian Implementation In General Environments, Takashi Kunimoto May 2019

Mixed Bayesian Implementation In General Environments, Takashi Kunimoto

Research Collection School Of Economics

A social choice rule is said to be mixed Bayesian implementable if one can design a mechanism (or institution) in which the set of all mixed Bayesian Nash equilibrium outcomes coincides with that specified by the rule. The objective of this paper is to generalize the results of mixed Bayesian implementation. By means of example, I first assess the implication of common priors in Bayesian implementation. Second, I identify a mild condition that fills the gap between the necessity and sufficiency for mixed Bayesian implementation in general environments including non-economic ones. Third, I establish some new results to unify the …


The Revealed Preference Theory Of Stable Matchings With One-Sided Preferences, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang May 2019

The Revealed Preference Theory Of Stable Matchings With One-Sided Preferences, Gaoji Hu, Jiangtao Li, Rui Tang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This note studies the testable implications of the theory of stable matchings intwo-sided matching markets with one-sided preferences. Our main result connects therevealed preference analysis to the well-known lattice structure of the set of stablematchings, and tests the rationalizability of a data set by analyzing the joins andmeets of matchings.


Random Coefficient Continuous Systems: Testing For Extreme Sample Path Behavior, Yubo Tao, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Apr 2019

Random Coefficient Continuous Systems: Testing For Extreme Sample Path Behavior, Yubo Tao, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies a continuous time dynamic system with a random persistence parameter. The exact discrete time representation is obtained and related to several discrete time random coefficient models currently in the literature. The model distinguishes various forms of unstable and explosive behavior according to specific regions of the parameter space that open up the potential for testing these forms of extreme behavior. A two-stage approach that employs realized volatility is proposed for the continuous system estimation, asymptotic theory is developed, and test statistics to identify the different forms of extreme sample path behavior are proposed. Simulations show that the …


Common Threshold In Quantile Regressions With An Application To Pricing For Reputation, Liangjun Su, Pai Xu Apr 2019

Common Threshold In Quantile Regressions With An Application To Pricing For Reputation, Liangjun Su, Pai Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The paper develops a systematic estimation and inference procedure for quantile regression models where there may exist a common threshold effect across different quantile indices. We first propose a sup-Wald test for the existence of a threshold effect, and then study the asymptotic properties of the estimators in a threshold quantile regression model under the shrinking-threshold-effect framework. We consider several tests for the presence of a common threshold value across different quantile indices and obtain their limiting distributions. We apply our methodology to study the pricing strategy for reputation via the use of a dataset from Taobao.com. In our economic …


Asymptotic Theory For Rough Fractional Vasicek Models, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu Apr 2019

Asymptotic Theory For Rough Fractional Vasicek Models, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper extends the asymptotic theory for the fractional Vasicek model developed in Xiao and Yu (2018) from the case where H ∈ (1/2, 1) to the case where H ∈ (0, 1/2). It is found that the asymptotic theory of the persistence parameter (k) critically depends on the sign of k. Moreover, if k > 0, the asymptotic distribution for the estimator of k is different when H ∈ (0, 1/2) from that when H ∈ (1/2, 1).


Rank Tests At Jump Events, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen, Huidi. Lin Apr 2019

Rank Tests At Jump Events, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen, Huidi. Lin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a test for the rank of a cross-section of processes at a set of jump events. The jump events are either specific known times or are random and associated with jumps of some process. The test is formed from discretely sampled data on a fixed time interval with asymptotically shrinking mesh. In the first step, we form nonparametric estimates of the jump events via thresholding techniques. We then compute the eigenvalues of the outer product of the cross-section of increments at the identified jump events. The test for rank r is based on the asymptotic behavior of the …


Sieve Estimation Of Time-Varying Panel Data Models With Latent Structures, Liangjun Su, Xia Wang, Sainan Jin Apr 2019

Sieve Estimation Of Time-Varying Panel Data Models With Latent Structures, Liangjun Su, Xia Wang, Sainan Jin

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a heterogeneous time-varying panel data model with a latent group structure that allows the coefficients to vary over both individuals and time. We assume that the coefficients change smoothly over time and form different unobserved groups. When treated as smooth functions of time, the individual functional coefficients are heterogeneous across groups but homogeneous within a group. We propose a penalized-sieve-estimation-based classifier-Lasso (C-Lasso) procedure to identify the individuals’ membership and to estimate the group-specific functional coefficients in a single step. The classification exhibits the desirable property of uniform consistency. The C-Lasso estimators and their post-Lasso versions achieve the oracle …


Building An Equitable And Inclusive City Through Housing Policies: Singapore’S Experience, Sock Yong Phang Apr 2019

Building An Equitable And Inclusive City Through Housing Policies: Singapore’S Experience, Sock Yong Phang

Research Collection School Of Economics

Inequality is an age-old concern. In recent years, the rise of income inequality has received worldwide media and policy attention, beginning with the Occupy movement of 2011-2012 and a wave of notable scholastic books such as Stiglitz (2012), Piketty (2014), and Atkinson (2015). Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, an unlikely bestseller, contained a vast amount of data showing that the rich are taking rising shares of income and wealth in the advanced economies. Piketty’s approach towards capital and wealth is an aggregative one, and he does not treat real estate or land as a different or distinct form of …