Econometrics Commons^™

Granger Causality And Structural Causality In Cross-Section And Panel Data, Xun Lu, Liangjun Su, Halbert White

Research Collection School Of Economics

Granger noncausality in distribution is fundamentally a probabilistic conditional independence notion that can be applied not only to time series data but also to cross-section and panel data. In this paper, we provide a natural definition of structural causality in cross-section and panel data and forge a direct link between Granger (G-) causality and structural causality under a key conditional exogeneity assumption. To put it simply, when structural effects are well defined and identifiable, G-non-causality follows from structural noncausality, and with suitable conditions (e.g., separability or monotonicity), structural causality also implies G-causality. This justifies using tests of G-non-causality to test …

Asymptotic Theory For Estimating Drift Parameters In The Fractional Vasicek Model, Weilin Xiao, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops the asymptotic theory for estimators of two parameters in the drift function in the fractional Vasicek model when a continuous record of observations is available. The fractional Vasicek model is assumed to be driven by the fractional Brownian motion with a known Hurst parameter greater than or equal to one half. It is shown that the asymptotic theory for the persistent parameter depends critically on its sign, corresponding asymptotically to the stationary case, the explosive case, and the null recurrent case. In all three cases, the least squares method is considered. When the persistent parameter is positive, …

The Cultural Transmission Of Trust Norms: Evidence From A Lab In The Field On A Natural Experiment, Jared Rubin, Elira Karaja

ESI Working Papers

We conduct trust games in three villages in a northeastern Romanian commune. From 1775-1919, these villages were arbitrarily assigned to opposite sides of the Habsburg and Ottoman/Russian border despite being located seven kilometers apart. Russian and Ottoman Öscal institutions were more rapacious than Habsburg institutions, which may have eroded trust of outsiders (relative to co-villagers). Our design permits us to rigorously test this conjecture, and more generally, whether historically institutionalized cultural norms are transmitted intergenerationally. We Önd that participants on the Ottoman/Russian side are indeed less likely to trust outsiders but more likely to trust co-villagers.

The Ideological Roots Of Institutional Change, Murat Iyigun, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Why do some societies fail to adopt more efficient institutions in response to changing economic conditions? And why do such conditions sometimes generate ideological backlashes and at other times lead to transformative sociopolitical movements? We propose an explanation that highlights the interplay--or lack thereof--between new technologies, ideologies, and institutions. When new technologies emerge, uncertainty results from a lack of understanding how the technology will fit with prevailing ideologies and institutions. This uncertainty discourages investment in institutions and the cultural capital necessary to take advantage of new technologies. Accordingly, increased uncertainty during times of rapid technological change may generate an ideological …

Deception And Reception: The Behavior Of Information Providers And Users, Roman M. Sheremeta, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Working Papers

We investigate the behavior of information providers (underwriters) and users (investors) in a controlled laboratory experiment where underwriters have incentives to deceive and investors have incentives to avoid deception. Participants play simultaneously as underwriters and investors in one-shot information transmission games. The results of our experiment show a significant proportion of both deceptive and non-deceptive underwriters. Despite the presence of deceptive underwriters, investors are receptive to underwriters’ reports, gleaning information content, albeit overly optimistic. Within our sample, deception by underwriters and reception by investors are the most profitable strategies. Moreover, participants who send deceptive reports to investors, but at the …

Monitoring Institutions In Indefinitely Repeated Games, Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari

ESI Working Papers

Does monitoring past conduct facilitate intertemporal cooperation? We designed an experiment characterized by strategic uncertainty and multiple equilibria where coordinating on the efficient outcome is a challenge. Participants, interacting anonymously in a group, could pay a cost either to obtain information about their counterparts, or to create a freely available public record of individual conduct. Both monitoring institutions were actively employed. However, groups were unable to attain higher levels of cooperation compared to a treatment without monitoring. Information about past conduct alone thus appears to be ineffective in overcoming coordination challenges.

Targeted Campaign Competition, Loyal Voters, And Supermajorities, Pierre C. Boyer, Kai A. Konrad, Brian Roberson

ESI Working Papers

We consider campaign competition in which candidates compete for votes among a continuum of voters by engaging in persuasive efforts that are targetable. Each individual voter is persuaded by campaign effort and votes for the candidate who targets more persuasive effort to this voter. Each candidate chooses a level of total campaign effort and allocates their effort among the set of voters. We completely characterize equilibrium for the majoritarian objective game and compare that to the vote-share maximizing game. If the candidates are symmetric ex ante, both types of electoral competition dissipate the rents from once in expectation. However, the …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- March 2017, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Savings, Net Foreign Assets And Current Accounts Dynamics In Subsaharan Africa, A. I. Adeleke, W. Ohemeng, K. Ofori-Boateng

Economic and Financial Review

A profile of the current account balance in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) shows that many countries in the region have consistently experienced current account deficits, dwindling savings and diminishing net foreign assets. These macroeconomic variables convey important information to economic agents about the health of a nation. The relationships among these three important variables in terms of short-run and long-run dynamics are cloudy in the literature. Therefore, this study examined the long-run and short-run dynamics of savings, net foreign assets and current account balance in subSaharan Africa. Utilising panel econometric techniques with annual data from 38 countries in SSA for the …

Determination Of Optimal Foreign Exchange Reserves For Nigeria, M. Tule, E. Egbuna,, S. Abdusalam, A. Oduyemi

Economic and Financial Review

The study examined the optimal level of international reserves for Nigeria that is capable of absorbing a shock similar to that experienced during the 2007/2009 Global economic crisis. Using, generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH), vector autoregressive (VAR) estimation techniques and normalised Johansen cointegrated equation, and setting the maximum and minimum output losses for the entire period, the study found a positive relationship between the odds of default on sovereign debt and fiscal deficit to GDP ratio, short-term debt to reserves ratio and volatility in portfolio investments. In minimising the Bank's cost of holding reserves, the study found that the Nigerian …

Interest Rate Dynamics And Real Output Behaviour In Nigeria: A Simulation Analysis, S. Rapu, G. Sanni, D. Penzin, N. Nkang, P. Golit, H. Okafor, E. Ibi

Economic and Financial Review

The declining output growth observed from the second quarter of 2014, which led to calls for a more expansionary monetary policy despite rising inflationary pressure, necessitated a reassessment of the impact of interest rate on real output growth in Nigeria. Using a Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (BVAR) model and quarterly data from 2000:Q4 to 2015:Q3, the effect of monetary policy transmission (interest rate dynamics) on real output performance was estimated. Although results of the simulation analysis were somewhat mixed, those of the impulse response functions indicated that positive shocks to monetary policy rate (MPR) produced a negative and small impact on …

Econometric Reviews Honors Esfandiar Maasoumi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

This Special Issue of Econometric Reviews (ER) is a tribute to Esfandiar Maasoumi for his longstanding contributions to the econometrics profession as an outstanding researcher, a revered teacher and supervisor, and a journal editor of three decades, all of which manifests his extraordinary devotion to the discipline of econometrics and to its growing community of students and scholars. Essie, as he is universally known to his friends, colleagues, and the international community, took on the editorship of ER in 1987. At that point, as (very) senior members of the profession will remember, the journal had a paperback cover, no formal …

Reduced Forms And Weak Instrumentation, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper develops exact finite sample and asymptotic distributions for a class of reduced form estimators and predictors, allowing for the presence of unidentified or weakly identified structural equations. Weak instrument asymptotic theory is developed directly from finite sample results, unifying earlier findings and showing the usefulness of structural information in making predictions from reduced form systems in applications. Asymptotic results are reported for predictions from models with many weak instruments. Of particular interest is the finding that, in unidentified and weakly identified structural models, partially restricted reduced form predictors have considerably smaller forecast mean square errors than unrestricted reduced …

Lag Length Selection In Panel Autoregression, Chirok Han, Peter C. B. Phillips, Donggyu Sul

Research Collection School Of Economics

Model selection by BIC is well known to be inconsistent in the presence of incidental parameters. This article shows that, somewhat surprisingly, even without fixed effects in dynamic panels BIC is inconsistent and overestimates the true lag length with considerable probability. The reason for the inconsistency is explained, and the probability of overestimation is found to be 50% asymptotically. Three alternative consistent lag selection methods are considered. Two of these modify BIC, and the third involves sequential testing. Simulations evaluate the performance of these alternative lag selection methods in finite samples.

Joint Spatial Time Series Epidemiological Analysis Of Malaria And Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Infection, O. A. Adegboye, M. Al-Saghir, Denis H. Y. Leung

Research Collection School Of Economics

Malaria and leishmaniasis are among the two most important health problems of many developing countries especially in the Middle East and North Africa. It is common for vector-borne infectious diseases to have similar hotspots which may be attributed to the overlapping ecological distribution of the vector. Hotspot analyses were conducted to simultaneously detect the location of local hotspots and test their statistical significance. Spatial scan statistics were used to detect and test hotspots of malaria and cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Afghanistan in 2009. A multivariate negative binomial model was used to simultaneously assess the effects of environmental variables on malaria …

The Paradox Of Power: Principal-Agent Problems And Fiscal Capacity In Absolutist Regimes, Debin Ma, Jared Rubin

ESI Working Papers

Tax extraction in Qing China was low relative to Western Europe. It is not obvious why: China was much more absolutist and had stronger rights over property and people. Why did the Chinese not convert their absolute power into revenue? We propose a model, supported by historical evidence, which suggests that i) the center could not ask its tax collecting agents to levy high taxes because it would incentivize agents to overtax the peasantry; ii) the center could not pay agents high wages in return for high taxes because the center had no mechanism to commit to refrain from confiscating …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- February 2017, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Deviance Information Criterion For Bayesian Model Selection: Justification And Variation, Yong Li, Jun Yu, Tao Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

Deviance information criterion (DIC) has been extensively used for making Bayesian model selection. It is a Bayesian version of AIC and chooses a model that gives the smallest expected Kullback-Leibler divergence between the data generating process (DGP) and a predictive distribution asymptotically. We show that when the plug-in predictive distribution is used, DIC can have a rigorous decision-theoretic justification under regularity conditions. An alternative expression for DIC, based on the Bayesian predictive distribution, is proposed. The new DIC has a smaller penalty term than the original DIC and is very easy to compute from the MCMC output. It is invariant …

Investing In The Presence Of Massive Flows, Terence C. Burnham, Harry Gakidis, Jeffrey Wurgler

ESI Working Papers

Approximately $10 trillion is benchmarked to Morgan Stanley Capital International’s Developed, Emerging, Frontier, and standalone market indexes. Reclassifications from one index to another require thousands of investors to decide how to react. We study a comprehensive sample of past reclassifications to guide this decision. Reclassified markets’ prices substantially overshoot between the announcement and effective dates—prices fall when a market moves from an index with more benchmarked ownership to one with less, such from Emerging to Frontier, and vice-versa—but revert within a year. We identify alpha-maximizing responses to reclassifications for both tightly benchmarked and more flexible investors.

Fdi And Income Inequality In Latin America, Terese Coulon

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

The main purpose of this paper is to determine the relationship between FDI and income inequality in Latin America after Operation Condor. This study uses economic panel data from seven different Latin American countries over a sixteen year time period. This study takes place from 1982 to 1997. Other variables have been included in this study to achieve the most accurate results possible. The results from this study show that FDI is significant to income inequality at the 5% significance level in Latin America during this time period. Also, the results indicate that FDI has a positive effect on income …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- January 2017, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Giving Economic Data A Voice, Singapore Management University

Research@SMU: Connecting the Dots

Professor Su Liangjun is developing new techniques in econometrics to provide a more realistic understanding of the economy.

See the papers:

• Testing homogeneity in panel data models with interactive fixed effects
• Identifying latent structures in panel data
• Shrinkage estimation of dynamic panel data models with interactive fixed effects

The Race Against Time, Singapore Management University

Research@SMU: Connecting the Dots

Professor Tse Yiu Kuen is developing econometric models that can provide us with a clearer picture of global markets.

See the papers:

• Estimation of high-frequency volatility: An autoregressive conditional duration approach
• Intraday periodicity adjustments of transaction duration and their effects on high-frequency volatility estimation;
• Intraday value-at-risk: An asymmetric autoregressive conditional duration approach

Income Inequality In Latin America And The Caribbean: Inefficient Labor Markets And Remnants Of Racism, Vivian Tejada

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper aims to explore the key reasons as to why income inequality in Latin America is so vast. The study will investigate the various manners in which labor markets operate throughout Latin America and attempt to draw a connection between labor market inefficiency and income inequality keeping in mind the regions tumulus history with racism. Factors considered in this assessment are rate of income levels, unemployment, GDP p/capita, educational attainment, and age of labor force. The factors are accounted for in a regression model to examine the level of influence labor markets and race have on income inequality.

Effects Of Drought Conditions On Agricultural Productivity In Central And Western Tennessee, Sean Erwin

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper analyzes the relationship between agricultural productivity of farms in drought conditions. The variables used in this research include fertilizer expense, precipitation totals, and average temperature. The model integrates all of the mentioned variables and finds the connection between the land value of farms and the variables. The outcomes show that both fertilizer expense and precipitation have negative relationships to land values for farms, while average temperature has a positive relationship.

Fiscal Policy And Its Effects On Economic Growth, Jordan J. Smith

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth during the time horizons of 1985, 1998, and 2014. Using cross country data from a minimum of 37 countries, it is found that international trade taxes share a partial correlation with economic growth. The magnitude of this relationship is found to be positive during all time horizons, and is diminishing over time. Estimates from 2014 suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in a country’s international trade tax will grant that country a .6% increase to their economic growth rate.

An Empirical Analysis On The Effects Of Fbs College Football Success On Undergraduate Enrollment From 2000 To 2014, Liam Rice

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the theoretical connection between FBS College Football success and the undergraduate enrollment of schools in the Northeastern United States. With multiple texts qualitatively discussing the positive effects a winning football culture has on the amount of applicants an institution receives, this study attempts, using panel data, to discover quantitative connections in this field. Utilizing data from over 19 FBS colleges and universities from 2000 to 2014, this study finds that there is a significant, positive connection between undergraduate application rates and football wins, as well as championships. This study lays the foundation for future studies into the …

Does Economic Freedom Promote Standard Of Living Across Countries With Different Income Levels?, George Ossei

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possibility of a relationship between economic freedom and standard of living across countries with different income classifications. The study incorporates population with access to improved water supply sources, sanitation facilities, electricity and the internet, as well as foreign aid into the Kosack model of aid effectiveness. This is done in order to examine their effects on HDI.

Factors That Influence Economic Growth In Brics Member Countries And Oecd Developed Countries: A Panel Data Analysis, Xuran Zhang

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the factors that affect economic growth in developed nations, such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and others. It also includes developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). This study incorporates several independent variables to examine their influence on economic growth in these two groups of nations. The study looks at contributing factors for economic growth, such as life expectancy, primary education, secondary education, expected import, expected export, population growth rate, FDI level, and public expenditure, using macro-level data from two sources: the World Bank and the Organization of …

The Effects Of Foreign Aid On Income Inequality In Africa, Sierra Moore

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper examines the correlation between donations of foreign aid given to African countries and the income inequality, measured using the Gini coefficient, within those countries. A panel method is used in order to analyze trends in a number of countries over a period of time. The independent variables in this study are official developmental assistance, income group, inflation measured by CPI, polity, GDP per capita growth, and population growth. The results of this study show a negative relationship between foreign aid and income inequality, which is consistent with recent studies on the effectiveness of aid.