Granger Causality And Structural Causality In Cross-Section And Panel Data,
2017
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
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,
2017
Zhejiang University
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 Ideological Roots Of Institutional Change,
2017
University of Colorado
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 …
The Cultural Transmission Of Trust Norms: Evidence From A Lab In The Field On A Natural Experiment,
2017
Chapman University
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.
Deception And Reception: The Behavior Of Information Providers And Users,
2017
Chapman University
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,
2017
Chapman University
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,
2017
Université Paris-Saclay
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,
2017
University of Rhode Island
Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- March 2017, Leonard Lardaro
The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index
No abstract provided.
Lag Length Selection In Panel Autoregression,
2017
Korea University - Korea
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.
Econometric Reviews Honors Esfandiar Maasoumi,
2017
Singapore Management University
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,
2017
Singapore Management University
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 …
Savings, Net Foreign Assets And Current Accounts Dynamics In Subsaharan Africa,
2017
Central Bank of Nigeria
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,
2017
Central Bank of Nigeria
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,
2017
Central Bank of Nigeria
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 …
Joint Spatial Time Series Epidemiological Analysis Of Malaria And Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Infection,
2017
Qatar University
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,
2017
London School of Economics
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,
2017
University of Rhode Island
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,
2017
Renmin University of China
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,
2017
Chapman University
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.
Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- January 2017,
2017
University of Rhode Island
Rhode Island Current Conditions Index -- January 2017, Leonard Lardaro
The Rhode Island Current Conditions Index
No abstract provided.
