Economics Commons^™

Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Do Not Explain The Hiv Epidemics In Africa: A Systematic Review Of The Evidence, Larry Sawers, Eileen Stillwaggon

Economics Faculty Publications

The notion that concurrent sexual partnerships are especially common in sub-Saharan Africa and explain the region’s high HIV prevalence is accepted by many as conventional wisdom. In this paper, we evaluate the quantitative and qualitative evidence offered by the principal proponents of the concurrency hypothesis and analyze the mathematical model they use to establish the plausibility of the hypothesis.

We find that research seeking to establish a statistical correlation between concurrency and HIV prevalence either finds no correlation or has important limitations. Furthermore, in order to simulate rapid spread of HIV, mathematical models require unrealistic assumptions about frequency of sexual …

The Ties That Binds: Colonies , Culture And Education Among Immigrants, David Ortmeyer, Aaron Jackson, Michael A. Quinn

Economics Faculty Publications

There is concern among many policy makers of a dual problem: too many immigrants overall but not enough highly-skilled immigrants. Using recently available data we examine the factors which influence both the quantity and average educational level of immigrants in OECD countries in 1990 and 2000. We find that geographic proximity and former colonial relationships positively influence the overall number of immigrants but are negatively related to immigrants’ average educational level. By contrast, variables such as greater economic freedom, more generous asylum policies, and a common language and religion increase both the quantity and educational level of immigrants. More highly …

Politics, Foreign Reserves And The Exchange-Rate-Based-Stabilization-Policy: The Lebanese Case, Kassim M. Dakhlallah

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Historical Origins Of Inter-Religion Differences: Evidence From 19th And 20th Century Egypt, Mohamed Saleh

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Saving Investment Association In Turkey, Huseyin Kaya

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

The Causal Relation Between Savings And Economic Growth: Some Evidence From Mena Countries, Bassam Abual-Foul

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

On The Liquidity Effect In Algeria And Morocco: An Empirical Investigation, Mohamed Benbouziane, Abdelhak Benamar

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Oil, Labor Markets, And Economic Diversification In The Gcc: An Empirical Assessment, Tarek Coury, Chetan Dave

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Consumer Confidence And Financial Market: Variables In Turkey During The Global Crisis, Sadullah Celik, Erhan Aslanoglu, Seda Uzun

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Explaining The Dearth Of Fdi In The Middle East, Sarkis Joseph Khoury, Eva Wagner, Johannes Kepler

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Changes In Exchange Rates And The Performance Of The Manufacturing Sectors In Turkey, A. Suut Dogruel, Fatma Dogruel, Umit Izmen

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Sustainability Of The Turkish Paygo System's Generosity In People's Eyes, Yigit Aydede

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Inquiry Into Income Convergence In Mena Countries: A Neural Network Approach, Majid Sameti

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

The 2009 Contribution Of Professional And Public Programs (P3) To The El Paso Community, Elizabeth K. Gibson, Guadalupe Corral, David A. Schauer, Mario Caire, Dennis L. Soden

IPED Technical Reports

The Institute for Policy and Economic Development (IPED) at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) was contracted by Professional and Public Programs (P3), the continuing education division of UTEP, to conduct a study assessing the impact of the organization on the local community, as well as evaluate the programs offered by its Professional Training and Development (PT&D) and Community Enrichment (CE) departments. As a continuing education provider, P3 offers a variety of educational, professional and personal programs to the El Paso region’s traditional and non-traditional consumers of University resources including business, professional, and government entities, as well as …

Lobbying And Growth: Explaining Differences Among Oecd Countries, Mehmet Babacan

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

No abstract provided.

Semiparametric Estimation In Time Series Of Simultaneous Equations, Jiti Gao, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A system of vector semiparametric nonlinear time series models is studied with possible dependence structures and nonstationarities in the parametric and nonparametric components. The parametric regressors may be endogenous while the nonparametric regressors are strictly exogenous and represent trends. The parametric regressors may be stationary or nonstationary and the nonparametric regressors are nonstationary time series. This framework allows for the nonparametric treatment of stochastic trends and subsumes many practical cases. Semiparametric least squares (SLS) estimation is considered and its asymptotic properties are derived. Due to endogeneity in the parametric regressors, SLS is generally inconsistent for the parametric component and a …

Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C.B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A new recursive regression methodology is introduced to analyze the bubble characteristics of various financial time series during the subprime crisis. The methods modify a technique proposed in Phillips, Wu and Yu (2010) and provide a technology for identifying bubble behavior and consistent dating of their origination and collapse. The tests also serve as an early warning diagnostic of bubble activity. Seven relevant financial series are investigated, including three financial assets (the Nasdaq index, home price index and asset-backed commercial paper), two commodities (the crude oil price and platinum price), one bond rate (Baa), and one exchange rate (Pound/USD). Statistically …

The Mysteries Of Trend, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Trends are ubiquitous in economic discourse, play a role in much economic theory, and have been intensively studied in econometrics over the last three decades. Yet the empirical economist, forecaster, and policy maker have little guidance from theory about the source and nature of trend behavior, even less guidance about practical formulations, and are heavily reliant on a limited class of stochastic trend, deterministic drift, and structural break models to use in applications. A vast econometric literature has emerged but the nature of trend remains elusive. In spite of being the dominant characteristic in much economic data, having a role …

Interdependent Preferences And Strategic Distinguishability, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Satoru Takahashi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We study agents whose expected utility preferences are interdependent for informational or psychological reasons. We characterize when two types can be “strategically distinguished” in the sense that they are guaranteed to behave differently in some finite mechanism. We show that two types are strategically distinguishable if and only if they have different hierarchies of interdependent preferences. The same characterization applies for rationalizability, equilibrium, and any interim solution concept in between. Our results generalize and unify results of Abreu and Matsushima (1992), who characterize strategic distinguishability on fixed finite type spaces, and Dekel, Fudenberg, and Morris (2006), (2007), who characterize strategic …

Banking Reforms For Effective Monetary Policy Transmissions., O. A. Uchendu

Bullion

This paper evaluates the effects of the recent banking sector in Nigeria on monetary policy transmission. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section two dwells on the transmission mechanism of monetary policy; section three examines the features of the banking sector that affect the conduct of monetary policy; section four presents banking sector reforms in Nigeria while section five examines the impact of the reforms on monetary policy. Section six presents the challenges while section seven concludes the paper.

Overview Of The Four Pillars Of The Banking Reforms., Samuel A. Oni

Bullion

The reports of the risk assessment exercise formed the basis of the intervention by the CBN in some banks and the introduction of the four pillar reform programme, to guarantee the safety and soundness of the banking system. The four pillars of the banking system reforms, which is the main subject, are as follows: Enhancing the quality of banks; Establishing financial stability; Enabling healthy financial sector evolution; and Ensuring that the financial sector contributes to the real economy.

Identifying Finite Mixtures In Econometric Models, Marc Henry, Yuichi Kitamura, Bernard Salanié

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We consider partial identification of finite mixture models in the presence of an observable source of variation in the mixture weights that leaves component distributions unchanged, as is the case in large classes of econometric models. We first show that when the number J of component distributions is known a priori, the family of mixture models compatible with the data is a subset of a J ( J – 1)-dimensional space. When the outcome variable is continuous, this subset is defined by linear constraints which we characterize exactly. Our identifying assumption has testable implications which we spell out for J …

Nonlinear Cointegrating Regression Under Weak Identification, Xiaoxia Shi, Peter C.B. Phillips

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

An asymptotic theory is developed for a weakly identified cointegrating regression model in which the regressor is a nonlinear transformation of an integrated process. Weak identification arises from the presence of a loading coefficient for the nonlinear function that may be close to zero. In that case, standard nonlinear cointegrating limit theory does not provide good approximations to the finite sample distributions of nonlinear least squares estimators, resulting in potentially misleading inference. A new local limit theory is developed that approximates the finite sample distributions of the estimators uniformly well irrespective of the strength of the identification. An important technical …

Interdependent Preferences And Strategic Distinguishability, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Satoru Takahashi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A universal type space of interdependent expected utility preference types is constructed from higher-order preference hierarchies describing (i) an agent’s (unconditional) preferences over a lottery space; (ii) the agent’s preference over Anscombe-Aumann acts conditional on the unconditional preferences; and so on. Two types are said to be strategically indistinguishable if they have an equilibrium action in common in any mechanism that they play. We show that two types are strategically indistinguishable if and only if they have the same preference hierarchy. We examine how this result extends to alternative solution concepts and strategic relations between types.

Interdependent Preferences And Strategic Distinguishability, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Satoru Takahashi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We identify a universal type space of possible interdependent (expected utility) preferences of a group of agents satisfying two criteria. First, a type consists of a “detail free” description, in a natural language, of the agents’ interdependent preferences. Second, distinct types in the universal type space must be “strategically distinguishable” in the sense that there must exist a mechanism where those types are guaranteed to behave differently in equilibrium. Our results generalize and unify results of Abreu and Matsushima (1992b) (who characterized strategic distinguishability on fixed finite type spaces) and Dekel, Fudenberg, and Morris (2006), (2007) (who characterized strategic distinguishability …

Medium-Term Economic Growth In The Caribbean, Frederic L. Pryor

Economics Faculty Works

This study compares the GDP growth rates of twenty-two Caribbean countries and territories between 1980 and 2007. It shows that a simple model with one economic, two environmental and two political variables provides relatively good predictions of per capita GDP growth for the period. Other historical factors, that some have used to explain differential growth rates in the Caribbean, do not seem to play an important role. Este estudio compara el ritmo de crecimiento del PIB en veintidós países y territorios caribeños entre 1980 y 2007. El mismo muestra que un simple modelo con una variable económica, dos variables medioambientales …

Effects Of Urban Growth Controls On Intercity Commuting, Laudo M. Ogura

Peer Reviewed Articles

This paper presents an empirical study of the effects of urban growth controls on the intercity commuting of workers. Growth controls (land use regulations that attempt to restrict population growth and urban sprawl) have increased housing prices and diverted population growth to uncontrolled cities. It has been suggested that resulting changes in local labour supply might stimulate intercity commuting from uncontrolled to controlled cities. To test this hypothesis, a gravity model of commuting flows between places in California is estimated using alternative econometric methods (OLS, Heckman selection and count-data). The possibility of spatial dependence in commuting flows is also taken …

Seemingly Unrelated Regressions With Spatial Error Components, Badi H. Baltagi, Alain Pirotte

Center for Policy Research

This paper considers various estimators using panel data seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) with spatial error correlation. The true data generating process is assumed to be SUR with spatial error of the autoregressive or moving average type. Moreover, the remainder term of the spatial process is assumed to follow an error component structure. Both maximum likelihood and generalized moments (GM) methods of estimation are used. Using Monte Carlo experiments, we check the performance of these estimators and their forecasts under misspecification of the spatial error process, various spatial weight matrices, and heterogeneous versus homogeneous panel data models.

Rebuilding Confidence In Nigerian Banks: The Challenge Of Good Corporate Governance And Professionalism., Uju M. Ogubunka

Bullion

The Nigerian Banking industry which is still evolving, has great potentials for positively impacting on the developing economy with over a hundred and forty million (140 million) people. Without a doubt, the industry has made noticeable progress and positive impact since its birth in the early 1890s, it would have achieved more had it not been bedevilled by occasional crisis. incidences of bank crisis in Nigeria, like in other jurisdictions, had led to bank shake-ups, failures and subsequent liquidations. Those outcomes gave rise to serious erosion of stakeholders' confidence in banking institutions and the system with far-reaching negative consequences for …

The Role Of The Central Bank Of Nigeria In Ensuring Sound, Safe And Reliable Banking Sector., Chris O. Chukwu

Bullion

This paper examines effects of CBN economic and monetary policies on MDB to ensure sound and safe banking regime. The challenges of effective supervision of the banking sector, therefore involve a comprehensive supervisory approach and good faith of all stakeholders. The paper would covers five sections: 1. Review of the Nigerian banking system serves as an introduction; 2. The activities of the CBN in ensuring sound, safe and reliable banking sector; 3. The challenges facing effective banking supervision; 4. Review of the mitigating factors to the challenges facing effective supervision; and 5. Conclusion in which the paper advised CBN to …