Econometrics Commons^™

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- September 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Does A Weak Social Fabric Fuel The Predatory Lending Industry? The Link Between Payday Lending Activity And Community Trust, Alyssa H. Curran

Master's Theses - Economics

The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in theory pertaining to the relation between payday lending activity in each state and the level of trust and social capital in that state. This research has been motivated by the fact that no study has explicitly looked at the association between predatory financial institutions and the overall level of trust and social capital in a community. Nor has a nation-wide study been done. Multiple years of data is employed in this study to examine both the concentration of payday lenders in each state and the volume of payday activity …

Heteroskedasticity And Non-Normality Robust Lm Tests Of Spatial Dependence, Badi H. Baltagi, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

The standard LM tests for spatial dependence in linear and panel regressions are derived under the normality and homoskedasticity assumptions of the regression disturbances. Hence, they may not be robust against non-normality or heteroskedasticity of the disturbances. Following Born and Breitung (2011), we introduce general methods to modify the standard LM tests so that they become robust against heteroskedasticity and non-normality. The idea behind the robustification is to decompose the concentrated score function into a sum of uncorrelated terms so that the outer product of gradient (OPG) can be used to estimate its variance. We also provide methods for improving …

Semiparametric Estimation In Triangular System Equations With Nonstationarity, Jiti Gao, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

A system of multivariate 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 assumed to be strictly exogenous. The parametric regressors may be stationary or nonstationary and the nonparametric regressors are nonstationary integrated time series. Semiparametric least squares (SLS) estimation is considered and its asymptotic properties are derived. Due to endogeneity in the parametric regressors, SLS is not consistent for the parametric component and a semiparametric instrumental variable (SIV) method is proposed instead. Under certain regularity conditions, the SIV …

Modeling Myopia: Application To Non-Renewable Resource Extraction, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a parsimonious model of myopia with an infinitesimal period of commitment as an extension to a standard dynamic optimization in a continuous-time environment. We clearly distinguish the processes of planning future controls and choosing the current control, which makes the model both analytically and numerically convenient. In its application to a simple non-renewable resource extraction problem, we show that whether the terminal time is free or fixed determines the appropriateness of the approximation to myopic agents by constant discounting. We also show that the expiry of extraction permits may be useful in the presence of myopia.

Shrinkage Empirical Likelihood Estimator In Longitudinal Analysis With Time-Dependent Covariates: Application To Modeling The Health Of Filipino Children, Denis H. Y. Leung, Dylan S. Small, Jing Qin, Min Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

The method of generalized estimating equations (GEE) is a popular tool for analysing longitudinal (panel) data. Often, the covariates collected are time-dependent in nature, for example, age, relapse status, monthly income. When using GEE to analyse longitudinal data with time-dependent covariates, crucial assumptions about the covariates are necessary for valid inferences to be drawn. When those assumptions do not hold or cannot be verified, Pepe and Anderson (1994, Communications in Statistics, Simulations and Computation 23, 939–951) advocated using an independence working correlation assumption in the GEE model as a robust approach. However, using GEE with the independence correlation assumption may …

Robust Bayesian Model Selection, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper extends the robust Bayesian inference in misspecified models of Müller (2013, Econometrica) to Bayesian model selection of a set of misspecified models. It is shown that when a model is misspecified, under the Kullback-Leibler loss function, the risk associated with Müller's posterior is less (weakly) than that with the original posterior distribution asymptotically. Based on this new result, two new information criteria are proposed for model selection under model misspecification. Sufficient conditions are provided for the risk associated with Müller's posterior to be strictly smaller.

Agricultural Biotechnology, International Trade, General Equilibrium And Efficiency, Comlanvi Martin Konou

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ongoing debates about the adoption of the agricultural biotechnology in the developing countries and EU have dominated the literature in development economics and biosciences. This dissertation considers some environmental, economic and social consequences of the technology from three perspectives: 1) the impact of the ongoing pest density on the performance of the agricultural biotechnology in India; 2) trade consequences of EU restrictive trade policies towards biotech products; and 3) the adoption decision of the technology in the EU and the developing economies.

Agricultural biotechnology appears to be successful in increasing yield and reducing the use of pesticides. However, most studies …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- August 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Inconsistent Var Regression With Common Explosive Roots, Peter C. B. Phillips, Tassos Magdalinos

Research Collection School Of Economics

Nielsen (Working paper, University of Oxford, 2009) shows that vector autoregression is inconsistent when there are common explosive roots with geometric multiplicity greater than unity. This paper discusses that result, provides a coexplosive system extension and an illustrative example that helps to explain the finding, gives a consistent instrumental variable procedure, and reports some simulations. Some exact limit distribution theory is derived and a useful new reverse martingale central limit theorem is proved.

Testing For Multiple Bubbles 1: Historical Episodes Of Exuberance And Collapse In The S&P 500, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Recent work on econometric detection mechanisms has shown the effectiveness of recursive procedures in identifying and dating financial bubbles. These procedures are useful as warning alerts in surveillance strategies conducted by central banks and fiscal regulators with real time data. Use of these methods over long historical periods presents a more serious econometric challenge due to the complexity of the nonlinear structure and break mechanisms that are inherent in multiple bubble phenomena within the same sample period. To meet this challenge the present paper develops a new recursive flexible window method that is better suited for practical implementation with long …

Testing For Multiple Bubbles 2: Limit Theory Of Real Time Detectors, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides the limit theory of real time dating algorithms for bubble detection that were suggested in Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011, PWY) and Phillips, Shi and Yu (2013b, PSY). Bubbles are modeled using mildly explosive bubble episodes that are embedded within longer periods where the data evolves as a stochastic trend, thereby capturing normal market behavior as well as exuberance and collapse. Both the PWY and PSY estimates rely on recursive right tailed unit root tests (each with a di§erent recursive algorithm) that may be used in real time to locate the origination and collapse dates of bubbles. …

Trial And Error In Influential Social Networks, Xiaohui Bei, Ning Chen, Liyu Dou, Xiangru Huang, Ruixin Qiang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we introduce a trial-And-error model to study information diffusion in a social network. Specifically, in every discrete period, all individuals in the network concurrently try a new technology or product with certain respective probabilities. If it turns out that an individual observes a better utility, he will then adopt the trial; otherwise, the individual continues to choose his prior selection. We first demonstrate that the trial and error behavior of individuals characterizes certain global community structures of a social network, from which we are able to detect macro-communities through the observation of microbehavior of individuals. We run …

Volatility Occupation Times, Jia Li, Viktor Todorov, George Tauchen

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose nonparametric estimators of the occupation measure and the occupation density of the diffusion coefficient (stochastic volatility) of a discretely observed Itô semimartingale on a fixed interval when the mesh of the observation grid shrinks to zero asymptotically. In a first step we estimate the volatility locally over blocks of shrinking length, and then in a second step we use these estimates to construct a sample analogue of the volatility occupation time and a kernel-based estimator of its density. We prove the consistency of our estimators and further derive bounds for their rates of convergence. We use these results …

Macroeconomic And Political Determinants Of Foreign Direct Investment In The Middle East, Robin Barnaby Calver

Dissertations and Theses

This study argues that governments with sustained GDP growth, open markets, low country risk, high levels and low standard deviation of government performance, and few or no occurrences of war, will see larger levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) over time. Scholarship on the determinants of FDI variously argues the influence of GDP growth, the openness of a country's economy, a government's level of political capacity, the level of country risk, and the negative effects of inter-, intra- and extrastate conflict. These studies on the various effects on FDI, while providing insightful and substantial statistical results, fail to capture the …

Financial Literacy And Financial Planning In France, Luc Arrondel, Majdi Debbich, Frédérique Savignac

Numeracy

We study financial literacy in France using the PATER survey and following the Lusardi and Mitchell (2011c) approach. We find that some subpopulations are less financially literate than others: women, young and old people as well as less-educated people are more likely to face difficulties when dealing with fundamental financial concepts such as risk diversification and inflation and interest compounding. We also find some differences in financial knowledge depending on the political opinion of the respondents. Finally we show that these differences in financial knowledge are correlated with differences in the propensity to plan: people who score higher on the …

Financial Literacy And Financial Behavior Among Young Adults: Evidence And Implications, Carlo De Bassa Scheresberg

Numeracy

This paper uses data from the 2009 National Financial Capability Study to examine financial literacy and financial behavior in a sample of approximately 4,500 young adults age 25 to 34. The paper finds that most young adults lack basic financial knowledge. Financial literacy is especially low among certain demographic groups, such as women, minorities, and lower-income or less-educated people. A high level of education, however, is not a guarantee of financial literacy. Only 49% of young respondents with a college education and 60% of young respondents with postgraduate education could correctly answer three simple questions designed to assess financial literacy. …

Economic Indices: Managing By The Numbers, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Understanding indices is not just about crunching numbers, but appreciating how it is constructed

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- July 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Robust Estimation And Inference For Jumps In Noisy High Frequency Data: A Local-To-Continuity Theory For The Pre-Averaging Method, Jia Li

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop an asymptotic theory for the pre-averaging estimator when asset price jumps are weakly identified, here modeled as local to zero. The theory unifies the conventional asymptotic theory for continuous and discontinuous semimartingales as two polar cases with a continuum of local asymptotics, and explains the breakdown of the conventional procedures under weak identification. We propose simple bias-corrected estimators for jump power variations, and construct robust confidence sets with valid asymptotic size in a uniform sense. The method is also robust to certain forms of microstructure noise.

An Econometric Analysis On Pricing And Market Structure In The U.S. Airline Industry, Jiajun Liang

The Macalester Review

This paper examines the relationship between market power and airfares in the U.S. aviation industry. I performed Hausman-Taylor and random effects estimation techniques on quarterly data of the top one thousand most heavily traveled city pairs from 2009 to 2012. Overall, the regression results may be interpreted in such way that while higher concentration at a route level increases ticket prices, it nonetheless reduces average airfare at the airport level. For policy implications, it may suggest that higher market concentration has at least some merits to the consumers, most likely caused by the cost saving due to economic use of …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- June 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

Cost-Effective Estimation Of The Population Mean Using Prediction Estimators, Tomoki Fujii, Roy Van Der Weide

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper considers the prediction estimator as an efficient estimator for the population mean. The study may be viewed as an earlier study that proved that the prediction estimator based on the iteratively weighted least squares estimator outperforms the sample mean. The analysis finds that a certain moment condition must hold in general for the prediction estimator based on a Generalized-Method-of-Moment estimator to be at least as efficient as the sample mean. In an application to cost-effective double sampling, the authors show how prediction estimators may be adopted to maximize statistical precision (minimize financial costs) under a budget constraint (statistical …

Risk, Religion, And Islamic Microfinance, Dunia Aburish

Master's Theses

This research design creates a framework in which the risk preferences and Islamic religiosity of Jordanian borrowers can be estimated. Specifically, this study highlights the different characteristics of conventional and Islamic microfinance borrowers. Although there is extensive literature on the topics of conventional microfinance and Islamic finance individually, few studies characterize borrowers who choose between these financial products. For this study, field research was conducted in conjunction with the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) and the Development and Employment Fund (DEF) in Jordan. Overall, 143 conventional and 78 Islamic borrowers were surveyed for a total sample of 221 borrowers. To estimate …

The Fii Model As An Investment In Patience: Exploring Time Preferences In Medellin, Colombia, Jennifer Graham

Master's Theses

The motivation for this research is to explore the success behind the Oakland based Family Independence Initiative (FII) as a model for poverty alleviation. During the period of June-December 2012, nearly 200 small business owners in Medellin, Colombia participated in a field experiment intended to replicate the FII model by randomizing the treatments of setting goals, receiving conditional payments, and participating in self-help groups, as well as the combinations thereof. The data shows that the subjects in the full FII treatment group achieve more goals and have significantly higher monthly sales than those subjects in any other treatment or control …

Different Uses Of Microfinance Among Conventional And Islamic Borrowers: Evidence From Jordan, Ngan Bui

Master's Theses

The paper focuses on investment decisions made by microfinance borrowers in Jordan. While there has been a lot of literature concentrating on the level of investment after credit access was made available, there has been very limited research on the impact of Islamic microfinance. The amount of literature comparing Islamic financing and its conventional counterpart is even more uncommon. This study will look at how conventional and Islamic borrowers differ in their decisions pertaining to business investments, home improvement projects and consumer durable goods. Results show that microfinance loan take-ups do lead to a higher probability of business investments. In …

Does Child Sponsorship Have A Positive Impact On The Quality Of Life And Social Behavior Of Sponsored Children? Evidence From Indonesia, Mario Carrillo

Master's Theses

Relaxing an internal constraint of an individual at early stages of life is an approach that complements traditional policy interventions aimed to alleviate poverty. The Compassion International child sponsorship program focuses their work on the emotional, social, and spiritual development of sponsored children. This study investigates the impacts of child sponsorship on the quality of life and social behavior of sponsored children using age-eligibility as an instrument for sponsorship, a time preference experiment and a trust game. The study looks specifically at self-esteem, optimism, social trust, educational outcomes, patience and reciprocity of 286 sponsored children and 234 non-sponsored children between …

Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- May 2013, Leonard Lardaro

The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Sex Offenders On Housing Sales Prices, Benjamin Walter Hatch

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I measure the impact of sex offenders on housing sales prices by combining data from the North Carolina Sex Offender Registry with data on housing sales from December 2004 through December 2008 in Mecklenburg County, NC. Using time-series and cross-sectional analysis, I estimate that the arrival of a sex offender into a neighborhood decreases housing sales prices within 0.1 of the miles of a sex offender by approximately 6%, while all other nearby housing sales prices are unaffected. I then apply this finding to examine sex offender residency restrictions passed in North Carolina in 2006. I find that houses located …

Lm Tests Of Spatial Dependence Based On Bootstrap Critical Values, Zhenlin Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

To test the existence of spatial dependence in an econometric model, a convenient test is the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test. However, evidence shows that, in finite samples, the LM test referring to asymptotic critical values may suffer from the problems of size distortion and low power, which become worse with a denser spatial weight matrix. In this paper, residual-based bootstrap methods are introduced for asymptotically refined approximations to the finite sample critical values of the LM statistics. Conditions for their validity are clearly laid out and formal justifications are given in general, and in details under several popular spatial LM …