Economics Commons^™

Can One Estimate The Conditional Distribution Of Post-Model-Selection Estimators?, Hannes Leeb, Benedikt M. Pötscher

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider the problem of estimating the conditional distribution of a post-model-selection estimator where the conditioning is on the selected model. The notion of a post-model-selection estimator here refers to the combined procedure resulting from first selecting a model (e.g., by a model selection criterion like AIC or by a hypothesis testing procedure) and second estimating the parameters in the selected model (e.g., by least-squares or maximum likelihood), all based on the same data set. We show that it is impossible to estimate this distribution with reasonable accuracy even asymptotically. In particular, we show that no estimator for this distribution …

Nonparametric Tests For Common Values In First-Price Sealed-Bid Auctions, Philip A. Haile, Han Hong, Matthew Shum

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We develop tests for common values at first-price sealed-bid auctions. Our tests are nonparametric, require observations only of the bids submitted at each auction, and are based on the fact that the “winner’s curse” arises only in common values auctions. The tests build on recently developed methods for using observed bids to estimate each bidder’s conditional expectation of the value of winning the auction. Equilibrium behavior implies that in a private values auction these expectations are invariant to the number of opponents each bidder faces, while with common values they are decreasing in the number of opponents. This distinction forms …

A Behavioral Model Of Bargaining With Endogenous Types, Dilip Abreu, David G. Pearce

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We enrich a simple two-person bargaining model by introducing “behavioral types” who concede more slowly than does the average person in the economy. The presence of behavioral types profoundly influences the choices of optimizing types. In equilibrium, concessions are calculated to induce “reciprocity”: a substantial concession by player i is followed by a period in which j is much more likely to make a concession than usual. This favors concessions by i that are neither very small nor large enough to end the bargaining immediately. A key difference from the traditional method of perturbing a game is that the actions …

Dynamic Modeling Of The Ssdi Application Timing Decision: The Importance Of Policy Variables, Rickard V. Burkhauser, J S. Butler, Gulcin Gumus

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper analyzes the importance of policy variables in the context of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. Previously, we explicitly modeled the optimal timing of SSDI application using dynamic structural models. We estimated these models using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). This paper uses option value model estimates to simulate application timing under alternative SSDI policy formulations. We consider changes in three policy variables: benefit levels, acceptance rates, and employer accommodation. Our simulations suggest all these changes would have substantial effects on expected spell lengths until application and on lifetime application rates, and hence …

The Lingnan Commentary - November 2003 (No. 8), Hong Kong Institute Of Business Studies, Lingnan University

The Lingnan Commentary 嶺南評論 : A Quarterly Review of Economic, Business and Social Issues by Lingnan University

No abstract provided.

A Survey On Physical Delivery Versus Cash Settlement In Futures Contracts, Donald Lien, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

A futures contract may adopt physical delivery or cash settlement to liquidate open positions after the maturity day. While traditionally physical delivery specification is favored, exchanges have recently turned to examine cash settlement possibilities. This paper summarizes current literature on settlement specifications with emphases on market manipulation, cash index construction, and hedging effectiveness comparisons

Tests Of Functional Form And Heteroscedasticity, Zhenlin Yang, Yiu Kuen Tse

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers tests of misspecification in a heteroscedastic transformation model. We derive Lagrange multiplier (LM) statistics for (i) testing functional form and heteroscedasticity jointly, (ii) testing functional form in the presence of heteroscedasticity, and (iii) testing heteroscedasticity in the presence of data transformation. We present LM statistics based on the expected information matrix. For cases (i) and (ii), this is done assuming the Box-Cox transformation. For case (iii), the test does not depend on whether the functional form is estimated or pre-specified. Small-sample properties of the tests are assessed by Monte Carlo simulation, and comparisons are made with the …

Benchmarking Study Of The Small Business Environment In Saginaw County, George A. Erickcek, Brad R. Watts

Reports

No abstract provided.

New Mexico Labor Market Review 10-31-2003, New Mexico Department Of Labor

Historic Publications

The New Mexico Labor Market Review is a monthly publication presenting statistical data and analysis on labor market conditions throughout New Mexico. Issues examine statewide and regional trends in employment, unemployment, labor force estimates, industry activity, wages, occupational demand, and related economic conditions, often accompanied by feature articles on topics affecting the state’s economy. This issue covers September 2003.

Sme Financing – Issues And Prospects, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

I would like to congratulate SMEDA on bringing together all the stakeholders together to discuss the issue related to financing of SMEs in Pakistan. I have listened to the presentations and also the interventions from the floor very carefully. Let me therefore share my thoughts with you on this important topic. We should start with the basics. As you have heard, from the presentations this evening, there is a tremendous demand of bank credit by the SMEs who are at present meeting most of their financing needs through friends, relatives and other informal sources. At the same time the banks …

Human Resource Management In Practice: A Case Study Of State Bank Of Pakistan, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

I am happy to address this august gathering of Human Resource Professionals. I had two options this morning. The first was to repeat the clichés and platitudes about the importance of human resource management in economic development and for organizational effectiveness. But considering that all of you are highly qualified practitioners in this field. I thought you would find this kind of address boring and unsatisfactory. Therefore, being faithful to the theme of this Conference I decided to present a case study at this session. Without being self-serving, I would like to share the lessons we have learnt during the …

The War For Oil Or The American Dilemma Of Hegemonic Nostalgia?, Cyrus Bina

Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

A Meta-Analysis Of Government-Sponsored Training Programs, David H. Greenberg, Charles Michalopoulos, Philip K. Robins

Economics Articles and Papers

This study uses meta-analysis to synthesize findings from 31 evaluations of 15 voluntary government-funded training programs for the disadvantaged that operated between 1964 and 1998. On average, the earnings effects of the evaluated programs seem to have been largest for women, quite modest for men, and negligible for youths. For men and women, the earnings effects of training appear to have persisted for at least several years after the training was complete. Classroom skills training was apparently effective in increasing earnings, but basic education was not. There is no evidence that more expensive training programs performed better than less expensive …

The Slow Pace Of Disbursement Of The Small And Medium Industries Equity Investment Scheme (Smieis) Fund And The Need For Remedial Measures, C. M. Anyanwu, B. S. Adebusuyi, B. O. Okafor

CBN Occasional Papers

The objectives of this paper are to investigate the reasons for the slow pace of investment under the scheme and proffer measures that would address the identified problems. The paper is organized into seven sections to achieve these objectives. Following this introduction, an overview of SMIEIS is done in section 2, while section 3 contains the operations of the Scheme to date. The empirical investigation is discussed in section 4 and the constraints on the implementation of SMIEIS are highlighted in section 5. This is followed by the suggested remedial actions in section 6 and the paper is concluded in …

Informal Credit And Monetary Management In Nigeria, Moses F. Otu, E. N. Egbuna, E. A. Essien, M. K. Tule

CBN Occasional Papers

The objectives of this study include: examining the banking network and rural financing intermediation in an effort to unveil factors that sustain and fuel informal credit market; understanding the nature, structure and size of the informal credit markets in Nigeria; evaluating the extent of the operations of informal market with respect to sources and application of funds as well as interest rate determination; examining the impact of informal credit institutions on the efficacy of monetary management in Nigeria; and based on the findings, make appropriate policy recommendations that would minimize the distortions of informal credit market activities on monetary management …

Political Barriers And The Transmission Of Monetary Policy Across States: The New England Antebellum Banking Market, Andrew J. Economopoulos

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

The New England antebellum banking market was examined to understand the interaction of political ideology and economic forces. With each state controlling bank entry, hence the money supply, political ideology could impede the supply of money within a state. However, the monetary forces from neighboring states may have influenced the degree to which parties held true to their political ideology. The results indicate that political ideology was an effective barrier in two of the six states, while three states were responsive to neighbor states' monetary policy regardless of political ideology. These states responded by creating new banks, raising existing capital …

Filling The Poverty Gap, Then And Now, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The extent to which means-tested transfers, social insurance, and tax credits fill the gap between a family’s private resources and the poverty threshold is a periodic barometer of the social safety net. Using data on families from the Current Population Survey I examine how the level and composition of before- and after-tax and after-transfer poverty gaps changed in response to changes in the policy and economic landscapes over the past two decades. The estimates presented here indicate not only dramatic changes in the level and sources of income maintenance programs filling the poverty gap, but also dramatic changes in which …

Comment On "Iterative And Recursive Estimation In Structural Nonadaptive Models Iterative And Recursive Estimation In Structural Nonadaptive Models" By S. Pastorello, V. Patilea, And E. Renault, Garland Durham, John Geweke

Finance

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Rationality Of Consensus Forecasts Of U. S. Economic Indicators, David C. Schirm

Economics & Finance

The purpose of this article is to investigate the rationality of two survey forecasts of selective U. S. macroeconomic performance measures that were widely followed in the financial markets during the 1990-2000 period. The research compares the rationality of survey forecast data from Money Market Services, Inc., and Thomson Financial. This article extends prior research that has evaluated the rationality of Money Market Services data for earlier time periods while also evaluating similar consensus forecast data from Thomson Financial that were widely reported in both Barron's and the Wall Street Journal during the 1990s.

A Comment On 'Does The Aggregate Demand Curve Suffer From The Fallacy Of Composition', Ben L. Kyer, Gary E. Maggs

Economics Faculty/Staff Publications

Commentary on "Does the Aggregate Demand Curve Suffer From the Fallacy of Composition," by Ira Saltz, Pat Cantrell, and Joseph Horton, is provided.

The Regional Impact Of Adding Additional Dairy Cows And Facilities To The I-29 Corridor Of South Dakota, Gary Taylor

Economics Commentator (1972- 2016)

No abstract provided.

To Bundle Or Not To Bundle, Hanming Fang, Peter Norman

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Commodity bundling is studied in an environment where the dispersion of valuations unambiguously decreases when two or more goods are sold as a bundle only. Bundling is more likely to dominate separately selling the goods if marginal costs are low relative to the average valuation, or if the distribution of valuations is very peaked around the mean.

The Edgeworth, Cournot And Walrasian Cores Of An Economy, Martin Shubik

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Three variations of the core of a market game representing an exchange economy are considered and compared. The possibility for utilizing the Walrasian core to reflect certain monetary phenomena is noted.

An Efficiency Rationale For Bundling Of Public Goods, Hanming Fang, Peter Norman

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper studies the role of bundling in the efficient provision of excludable public goods. We show that bundling in the provision of unrelated public goods can enhance social welfare. With a large number of goods and agents, first best can be approximated with pure bundling. For a parametric class of problems with binary valuations, we characterize the optimal mechanism, and show that bundling alleviates the free riding problem in large economies and decreases the extent of use exclusions. Both results are related to the idea that bundling makes it possible to reduce the incidence of exclusions because the variance …

The Invention Of Inflation-Indexed Bonds In Early America, Robert J. Shiller

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The world’s first known inflation-indexed bonds were issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780 during the Revolutionary War. These bonds were invented to deal with severe wartime inflation and with angry discontent among soldiers in the U.S. Army with the decline in purchasing power of their pay. Although the bonds were successful, the concept of indexed bonds was abandoned after the immediate extreme inflationary environment passed, and largely forgotten until the twentieth century. In 1780, the bonds were viewed as at best only an irregular expedient, since there was no formulated economic theory to justify indexation.

Optimal Provision Of Multiple Excludable Public Goods, Hanming Fang, Peter Norman

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper studies the optimal provision mechanism for multiple excludable public goods when agents’ valuations are private information. For a parametric class of problems with binary valuations, we characterize the optimal mechanism, and show that it involves bundling. Bundling alleviates the free riding problem in large economies in two ways: first, it can increase the asymptotic provision probability of socially efficient public goods from zero to one; second, it decreases the extent of use exclusions.

A Double Auction Market: Teaching, Experiment And Theory, Martin Shubik

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A simultaneous double auction market with bid and offer cards was utilized in classes on the theory and history of money and financial institutions and occasionally in classes on the theory of games. The prime purpose in using this game was to teach the students how to construct process models of economic phenomena. The second purpose was to consider the properties of the double auction market. The third purpose was to interpret the experimental results an link them to theory.

Growing Disparities Among Greater Boston Communities During The 1990s, David Terkla

Economics Faculty Publication Series

During the 1990s, rich communities in the Greater Boston area got richer, and the richest made gains that were proportionally greater than the gains made by those communities only slightly less rich. At the same time, the poorest communities stayed poor, and in fact became more poor in comparison with communities slightly less poor. This dynamic is even more striking when the ten poorest communities are compared and contrasted with the ten wealthiest communities. Census figures show a rapidly expanding differential between the communities of the Greater Boston area. As a commonwealth, we should be considering policies designed to ameliorate …

Economic Currents: The State Of The State Economy, Alan Clayton-Matthews

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

Over the course of the summer, the Massachusetts economy appears to have begun to turn the corner. In the first quarter of this year, gross state product, as measured by the current index for Massachusetts, experienced its ninth consecutive quarter of decline. In the second quarter, it was flat, and in the third quarter, managed to eke out a small gain, growing at an annualized rate of 0.4 percent. The shift in direction is being led by a recovery in demand for, and production of, technology products that began at the end of 2002, and has continued to gather momentum …

The Anunnaki, The Vampire, And The Structure Of Dissent, Marcus Librizzi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The latest incarnation of the vampire - in the conspiracy theories of David Icke - reveals the critical, revolutionary heart of the vampire legend. Discourse on the vampire appears above all to provide a structure of dissent, a metaphorical means of representing and soliciting critiques of the social order. The Anunnaki form of the vampire - in its immersion in the constellation of contemporary conspiracy theories, in its reflection on global capitalism, and in its blurring of historical and fictional narratives - has moved this structure of dissent from the cloak of darkness to the light of day.