Economics Commons^™

Is Central Bank Of Nigeria Pursuing Preferential Development Finance? Some Parametric And Non-Parametric Evidence, Xavier-Itam A. Okon

Bullion

As encompassing as the development finance interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria are, there appears to be a preference for the agricultural sector and the manufacturing sub-sector. The study applied the parametric ANOVA and the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis Tests, to inferentially determine whether this is, indeed, the case. Findings, however, indicate that the intervention intensity is equal for all sectors, implying the Bank adopts a holistic, rather than preferential, approach to its development finance practice. This strategically engenders, among others, uniform development, inclusive growth and economic diversification. The interventions should be sustained and their coverage extended to other crucial sub-sectors …

Efficiency Gain Argument Of Fiscal Federalism And Economic Growth: Evidence From Five Selected Developing Federal Economies, Hyacinth E. Ichoku, Walter O. Ugwuoke

Bullion

This paper investigated efficiency gain argument of fiscal federalism and economic growth with evidence from five selected developing federal economies. The curiosity is to ascertain whether the efficiency gain –the fundamental argument why countries adopt fiscal federalism is justified in these economies. The paper uses stochastic frontier model to achieve this objective. The evidence from the selected developing federal economies revealed diverging results. While in Nigeria, Ethiopia and India there is more expenditure decentralization than revenue decentralization suggesting that efficiency gains from fiscal federalism may remain elusive, in Brazil and South Africa there is more revenue decentralization than expenditure decentralization …

Capital Adequacy Requirement And Bank Behaviour In Nigeria, Baba Nmadu Yaaba, Lailah G. Sanusi

Bullion

The divergent views on the usefulness of capital adequacy ratio (CAR) in controlling the risk appetite of banks necessitates further research on its efficiency and effectiveness. Whereas proponents of CAR believe that it enhances the soundness and stability of the banking system, opponents contend that it can impedes on the intermediating capabilities of banks and possibly ignites credit crunch that could induce fall in the level of output. This study empirical verifies the infuence of CAR on the behavior of banks in Nigeria. The study adopts a system of simultaneous equation, in the tradition of Maraghni (2017) using Generalized Method …

Two Essays On The Microstructure Of The Housing Market: Agents' Diffused Effort And Sellers' Behavior Bias, Zhaohui Li

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

For the first essay, we generalize the classic Williams [1998 RFS] brokerage model by introducing the diffused effort. That is, the agent can cross-utilize effort spending on one listing to another one. Besides, the agent can manage heterogeneous housing assets. One counterintuitive finding in Williams’ paper is the absence of the agency problem. As a special case in our model, we recover the agency problem. We examine the positive externality due to the diffused effort and show that it depends on the agent’s inventory size. Hence there exists a trade-off between agents’ effort spending on existing listings and on finding …

Growth Empirics: A Bayesian Semiparametric Model With Random Coefficients For A Panel Of Oecd Countries, Badi Baltagi, Georges Bresson, Jean-Michel Etienne

Center for Policy Research

This paper proposes semiparametric estimation of the relationship between growth rate of GDP per capita, growth rates of physical and human capital, labor as well as other covariates and common trends for a panel of 23 OECD countries observed over the period 1971-2015. The observed differentiated behaviors by country reveal strong heterogeneity. This is the motivation behind using a mixed fixed and random-coefficients model to estimate this relationship. In particular, this paper uses a semiparametric specification with random intercepts and slopes coefficients. Motivated by Lee and Wand (2016), we estimate a mean field variational Bayes semiparametric model with random coefficients …

Education, Inclusive Growth And Development In Nigeria: Empirical Examination, Emmanuel Onwioduokit

Bullion

Fundamental changes in the intellectual and social stance of any society have always been preceded by educational renaissance. This paper investigates the role of education in achieving and sustaining economic development in Nigeria. Abstracting from the theory, the paper examines education in Nigeria, its enhancing, including comparative analysis with selected African countries and its connection with economic development. The ARDL model was adopted to examine both the short run and long run relationships between education and development proxied by HDI and education and economic growth within the context of inclusive growth model. Evidence from the estimated long run ARDL model …

The Impact Of External Debt On Agricultural Production In Nigeria (1980-2016): Autoregressive Distributed Lag Modelling, Aishatu U. Yerima, Hussaini M. Tahir

Bullion

The study analyzed the impact of external debt on Nigeria's agricultural production from 1980 to 2016 using secondary data obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) statistical bulletin and the World Development Indicators (WDI). Augmented DickeyFuller unit root test and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to co-integration were utilized, to achieve the objectives of the study. Empirical results revealed that the variables were cointegrated, indicating that they exhibited long run relationship, both in the short and the long run. External debt stock (EDS) had a significant positive impact on agricultural production (AGP), indicating that EDS positively impacted …

When Crises Happen: Coronavirus And What We Expect For Global Growth, Waqas Adenwala

Asian Management Insights

An unflinching take on the negative effects on growth from both demand and supply channels.

Consumption, Investment, Integration And Digitalisation Lead Growth In Asia, Piyush Gupta, Havovi Heerjee Joshi

Asian Management Insights

An interview with Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive Officer and Director of DBS Group, about the Asia growth story and the future of banking.

Labor Market Policies In A Roy-Rosen Bargaining Economy, Hugo Jales, Zhengfei Yu

Center for Policy Research

We study the effects of labor market policies using a bargaining model featuring compensating differentials (Rosen, 1986) and self-selection (Roy, 1951). The framework allows us to create a taxonomy of formal and informal employment. We use the model to estimate the effects of the minimum wage for the Brazilian economy using the “PNAD" dataset for the years 2001-2005. Our results suggest that, although the minimum wage generates unemployment and reallocation of labor to the informal sector, the policy might be desirable if the employment losses are concentrated in jobs characterized by low surplus.

Ceo Political Ideology And Management Earnings Forecast, Md Noman Hossain, Ahmed Elnahas, Lei Gao

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

Republican CEOs are more likely to issue earnings forecasts and to issue forecasts that are more accurate and timely. Republican CEOs favor range and less optimistic forecasts, convey more negative news, and have more positive earnings surprises. We address endogeneity using propensity score matching and difference-in-difference estimates. Our results are robust to controlling for CEO characteristics, incentives, overconfidence, and managerial ability, and are stronger for firms with a high level of institutional ownership and litigation risk. The preference for threat and ambiguity avoidance of conservative CEOs seem to outweigh the tendency to seize on information associated with their authoritarian personalities.

Shareholder Litigation Rights And Corporate Acquisitions, Chune Young Chung, Incheol Kim, Monika K. Rabarison, Thomas Y. To, Eliza Wu

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We examine the effect of shareholder litigation rights on managers’ acquisition decisions. Our experimental design exploits a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on July 2, 1999 that resulted in a reduction in shareholder class actions. We find that, since the ruling, firms in Ninth Circuit states acquire larger targets. Furthermore, acquirers’ returns are lower in these states, especially for those with weaker corporate governance. Further analysis shows that value destruction is the result of managers’ freedom to conduct empire-building acquisitions using overvalued equity. Overall, our findings indicate the importance of shareholder litigation as an external governance mechanism.

Financing Patterns In Transition Economies: Privatized Former Soes Versus Ab Initio Private Firms, Yu Liu, Nilesh Sah, Barkat Ullah, Zuobao Wei

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We employ 19,521 unique firms in 30 transition economies to investigate the relation between the origins of private firms and their financing patterns. In our sample, the private firms are either privatized former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or ab initio (from the beginning) private firms. Our results show that privatized former SOEs finance a higher proportion of their fixed assets from bank finance and supplier credit, while ab initio private firms rely more on informal finance. We argue that privatized former SOEs continue to benefit from the political and financial connections established during their SOE era. We further document that financial …

Shareholder Litigation Rights And Capital Structure Decisions, Nam H. Nguyen, Hieu V. Phan, Eunju Lee

School of Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We exploit the staggered adoption of the universal demand (UD) laws across U.S. states, which impedes shareholder rights to initiate derivative lawsuits, as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the relation between shareholder litigation rights and firm capital structures. We find that weaker shareholder litigation rights due to the UD laws adoption lead to higher financial leverage, which enhances firm value. Furthermore, the positive relation between the UD laws adoption and financial leverage is more pronounced for firms exposed to higher shareholder litigation risk ex ante or financially constrained firms. Our evidence is consistent with lower shareholder litigation threats motivating firms …

Essays On The Education Production Function, Daniel Dench

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters which test interventions along several dimensions of the education production function. In chapter one, I run a field experiment comparing the effect of two interventions, (1) an email nudge telling students similar problems to their homework will be on the exam and (2) grading the homework, on attempting homework. I find both interventions increase homework attempts: nudging by 3 percentage points and grading by 72 percentage points. Instrumenting for the effect of attempting the homework using grading, I find that attempting problems from the homework leads to an increase in the probability of getting …

Essays In Retirement Economics, Gunnar Poppe Yanez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1

The discrepancy between the high demand for annuities predicted by economic theory and the empirical low holdings of these assets, known as the annuity puzzle, is still not completely understood in economic studies of retirement finance. This paper assesses the effect of individuals' mortality risk learning process on annuitization. I isolate this effect by building a life-cycle model in which individuals have imperfect information of their true survival probability distribution, and therefore have to update their beliefs about it in a Bayesian manner. Using data on subjective mortality by the Health and …

Essays In Financial Economics And Applied Macroeconomics, Marius Mihai

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that cover topics in finance and macroeconomics.

Chapter 1 - Do Credit Booms Predict U.S. Recessions?

This paper investigates the role of bank credit in predicting U.S. recessions since the 1960s in the context of a bivariate probit model. A set of results emerge. First, credit booms are shown to have strong positive effects in predicting declines in the business cycle at horizons ranging from six to nine months. Second, by isolating the effect of credit booms, I identify their contributions to recession probabilities which range between three and four percentage points at a …

Building For Culture: How Municipal Ownership Of Cultural Facilities Influences Annual Arts Funding In American Cities, Adam M. Sachs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how local government support for arts and culture varies across 24 American cities. It has proven to be challenging for researchers to accurately measure municipal arts support. Research on cultural policy has also often focused on the federal level, despite total city expenditures far exceeding national or state government support. This thesis attempts to take an accurate pulse of city expenditures in 2017 and correlates those spending levels to the variation in city ownership of arts facilities. Rooted in the historical perspectives of the ‘new institutionalism’ and path-dependency, this paper argues that past decisions about taking ownership …

Original Gangsters: Genre, Crime, And The Violences Of Settler Democracy, Sean M. Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building upon examinations of genericity, subalternity, and carcerality by Black, Indigenous, and women-of-color feminist scholars, my dissertation offers an account of how truth claims are produced and sustained to limit social change in representatively governed societies. Taking the gangster genre as my lens, I first resituate the form, assumed to depict white-ethnic conflict in the U.S. and Europe, as a type of resistance to race-based political economic policies imposed by imperial regimes. After linking the subaltern classes of pre-20th-century southern Europe, southern Africa, South Asia, and the U.S. South—all subjected to criminalization as a mode of colonial and capitalist control—I …

Reclaiming Indiana: The Politics Of Crisis Amid The Failures Of Liberal Capitalist Modernity, Chris Grove

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This ethnography examines grassroots political responses to the economic crisis that began in 2008, foremost in the US Midwest, which arguably laid the groundwork both for the election of President Donald Trump and presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders. President Obama launched his $787 billion stimulus plan in Elkhart, Indiana, in early 2009. At the height of the crisis, unemployment skyrocketed from four to 20 percent in Elkhart, and it became central to struggles over the political direction of the US. With few safety nets, Elkhart residents struggled to meet their basic needs, creating conditions for political organizing on both …

Economics Of Higher Education Productivity, Uchenna K. Oparah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How does spending affect academic outcomes in higher education institutions? Postsecondary schools incur costs to provide services to its student body. In this study, I introduce multiple outcome variables, a two-stage production function, and current-year expenditures on core services to evaluate how school spending affects academic outcomes.

The empirical analysis includes 28 group sample parameter estimates from four outcome variables, the pooled sample, and group samples for each of six sectors. The fixed effects/instrumental variable (FE-IV) instructional expenditure parameter estimates were positive for 20 of the 28 group samples. The sign and size of the estimated academic output effects varied …

Intermediate Microeconomics With Microsoft Excel®, Humberto Barreto

Economics and Management Faculty publications

This unique text uses Microsoft Excel® workbooks to instruct students. In addition to explaining fundamental concepts in microeconomic theory, readers acquire a great deal of sophisticated Excel skills and gain the practical mathematics needed to succeed in advanced courses. In addition to the innovative pedagogical approach, the book features explicitly repeated use of a single central methodology, the economic approach. Students learn how economists think and how to think like an economist. With concrete, numerical examples and novel, engaging applications, interest for readers remains high as live graphs and data respond to manipulation by the user. Finally, clear writing and …

Density Deconvolution With Laplace Errors And Unknown Variance, Jun Cai, William C. Horrace, Christopher Parmeter

Center for Policy Research

We consider density deconvolution with zero-mean Laplace noise in the context of an error component regression model. We adapt the minimax deconvolution methods of Meister (2006) to allow estimation of the unknown noise variance. We propose a semi-uniformly consistent estimator for an ordinary-smooth target density and a modified “variance truncation device" for the unknown noise variance. We provide a simulation study and practical guidance for the choice of smoothness parameters of the ordinary-smooth target density. We apply restricted versions of our estimator to a stochastic frontier model of US banks and to a measurement error model of daily saturated fat …

Applications Of Machine Learning And Deep Learning In Macroeconomic And Financial Forecasting, Andi Cupallari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters.

In the first chapter I propose a novel approach to forecast risk premia selecting relevant predictors among hundreds of correlated stock characteristics. I adapt a recently developed method from the deep learning literature, Deep Neural Networks with Group Lasso Regular- ization. This method achieves high out of sample R2, and at the same time yields a sparse representation of the characteristics space that allows for interpretability of the otherwise black box deep learning model. For each period, the model chooses a subset of characteris- tics to be relevant for the risk premia forecast. Our …

Essays In Macroeconomics Of Emerging Markets, Miguel Acosta Henao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chapter 1. Law enforcement and the size of the informal sector.

I assemble new cross-country evidence showing that contrary to the standard view, the relationship between the size of the informal sector and tax rates is, at best, ambiguous. Law enforcement and informality also show no clear relation. Motivated by these findings, I augment a standard two-sector (formal and informal) small open economy model with endogenous law enforcement that depends on the size of the informal sector (measured by its assets) and government expenditure. I use a micro-dataset from Colombia to show that both taxes and law enforcement are necessary …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Borderplex Business Barometer, Volume 4, Number 6, Thomas M. Fullerton Jr., Steven L. Fullerton, Ana Gutierrez Zubiate, Ignacio Santana

Border Region Modeling Project

No abstract provided.

Land Policy And Welfare In China, Xin Zou

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation quantitatively studies the impact of land policy on welfare in China. There are two specific nationwide land policies of importance on which I focus: 1) The red-line policy that imposes a minimum 1.2 million square kilometers for agricultural use only 2) The zoning policy for urban land that strictly regulates the amount of industrial and residential land usages respectively; In the first chapter, I give an introduction about the land policy and institutional background in China and the related literature to my dissertation. Second chapter builds a two-sector(two-region) model to examine how the red-line policy interacts with land …

The Effect Of Endogenously-Determined Bullying On Test Scores, Hisham Bin Yacob Patel

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The problem of bullying is one of the main sources of adverse school environment. In this dissertation, I explore the effect of bullying on test scores, under the assumption that bullying is endogenously determined. Comparing my estimates with that from traditional OLS, I find that estimates from OLS grossly underestimates the effect of bullying on short-term student outcomes. I also find significant evidence of heterogeneity across various sub-groups; for example, male students are found to be less affected by bullying as compared to their female peers. Furthermore, male students are also found to be less affected by physical bullying while …

Stochastic Capacity Management In The Presence Of Production Resource Disruption, Boya Yang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation studies the capacity investment decision of a manufacturing firm facing demand uncertainty in the presence of shortage possibility in production resources, as often ignored in the literature. These production resources can be physical resources (component / raw material) or financial resources (working capital / budget). The shortage in these resources can be caused by a variety of supply chain disruptions; examples include global disruptions like COVID-19 and financial crisis in 2008 and local disruptions like shortage of components/workforce. The dissertation analyses two important issues related to capacity management: (i) the effect of production resource disruption on the capacity …