Economics Commons^™

Grey Market For Indian Ipos: Investor Sentiment And After-Market Performance, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Tiong Yang Thong, Vishwanath Ramanna

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant research on developed markets shows that investor sentiment is a prominent feature in IPO grey markets. There is sparse work in the context of emerging markets. We fill this lacuna by studying the working of the Indian IPO market. We consider this work interesting and relevant for the following reasons. First, grey market trading always involves short-selling as securities are not yet available. Since legal and institutional environment is less developed in emerging markets, the functioning of grey markets is of interest to policy makers and financial economists. Second, retail investors participate to a greater extent in IPOs of …

Essays On Location Choice And The Demand For Housing Services, Ovidiu Lasca

All Dissertations

My dissertation addresses two important individual level decisions: the choice of location made by young college graduates and the demand for owner-occupied housing. Young college graduates are an important component of the skilled labor force and one of the population groups with the highest risk of relocation. As a result, they are often targeted by state level policies aimed at attracting or retaining them in the labor force. My research reveals an important factor that determines the location chosen by young college graduates at the beginning of their career, and therefore informs policy makers on novel ways to make a …

Crime, Punishment, And Institutions, David Wilson

All Dissertations

The effect of prison conditions and discretionary parole on inmate behavior and crime rates is examined. Evidence suggests that prison conditions and crime rates are positively related, and that a shift away from discretionary parole leads to lower crime rates, but possibly higher levels of inmate misconduct.

Essays On The Performance Of Us Bank Holding Companies, Liliana Danila

All Dissertations

I employ nonparametric estimation techniques to explore different aspects of the performance of US bank holding companies (BHCs).
In my paper 'Market Pricing of U.S. Bank Holding Companies' Technical Efficiency,' I use quarterly data from 1986 to 2009 to examine whether changes in technical efficiencies of U.S. BHCs are reflected in their stock returns. The relationship between technical efficiency and stock returns is analyzed both in a financial and accounting framework. Efficiencies are estimated using the unconditional hyperbolic α-quantile estimator developed by Wheelock and Wilson (2008). This estimator is a local estimator and exhibits more desirable statistical properties than traditional …

Essays In The Political Economy Of Higher Education Funding, Benjamin Compton

All Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the consequences of political influence on state higher education funding at the committee level. The State of South Carolina has a long history of using a formula to determine the appropriate amount of funding that is to be allocated to its colleges and universities. I use the funding level implied by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education's formula as a counterfactual against which actual levels of appropriation are measured. The membership of key state legislative committees with alumni members is used to determine if colleges receive a greater proportion of their performance funding target than those …

Simulated Maximum Likelihood Estimation For Latent Diffusion Models, Tore Selland Kleppe, Jun Yu, Hans J. Skaug

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper a method is developed and implemented to provide the simulated maximum likelihood estimation of latent diffusions based on discrete data. The method is applicable to diffusions that either have latent elements in the state vector or are only observed at discrete time with a noise. Latent diffusions are very important in practical applications in financial economics. The proposed approach synthesizes the closed form method of Ait-Sahalia (2008) and the efficient importance sampler of Richard and Zhang (2007). It does not require any infill observations to be introduced and hence is computationally tractable. The Monte Carlo study shows …

Labor Supply Responses To The 1990s Japanese Tax Reforms, Ken Yamada

Research Collection School Of Economics

The consumption-leisure choice model implies that an exogenous change in tax rates will induce a change in labor supply. This implication is expected to be important to labor supplied by secondary earners under a progressive tax system when spousal income alters effective marginal tax rates. This paper examines labor supply responses to the income tax changes associated with Japanese tax reforms during the 1990s. The results indicate that the hours-of-work elasticity with respect to the net-of-tax rate is 0.8 for married women.

Risk And The Technology Content Of Fdi: A Dynamic Model, Pao Li Chang, Chia-Hui Lu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper incorporates risk into the FDI decisions of firms. The risk of FDI failure increases with the gap between the South's technology frontier and the technology complexity of a firm's product. This leads to a double-crossing sorting pattern of FDI firms of intermediate technology levels are more likely than others to undertake FDI. It is with the attempt to relax the upper bound of the technology content of FDI, we argue, that many FDI policies are created. The theory's predictions are consistent with the empirical pattern of FDI in China by US and Taiwanese manufacturing firms.

Testing For Multiple Bubbles, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Identifying explosive bubbles that are characterized by periodically collapsing behavior over time has been a major concern in the literature and is of great importance for practitioners. The complexity of the nonlinear structure in multiple bubble phenomena diminishes the discriminatory power of existing tests, as evidenced in early simulations conducted by Evans (1991). Multiple collapsing bubble episodes within the same sample period make bubble diagnosis particularly difficult and complicate attempts at econometric dating. The present paper systematically investigates these issues and develops new procedures for practical implementation and surveillance strategies by central banks. We show how the testing procedure and …

Bayesian Hypothesis Testing In Latent Variable Models, Yong Li, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Hypothesis testing using Bayes factors (BFs) is known not to be well defined under the improper prior. In the context of latent variable models, an additional problem with BFs is that they are difficult to compute. In this paper, a new Bayesian method, based on decision theory and the EM algorithm, is introduced to test a point hypothesis in latent variable models. The new statistic is a by-product of the Bayesian MCMC output and, hence, easy to compute. It is shown that the new statistic is easy to interpret and appropriately defined under improper priors because the method employs a …

Specification Sensitivities In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing, Shu-Ping Shi, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under different hypotheses and model specifications. The …

Marketing Margins Of Strawberries 2006-2010 Shipping Point-Terminal-Retail Price, Matej Mikle Barat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines vertical price relationships for fresh strawberries. Specifically, the focus is on three stages of the vertical chain. The first stage is the shipping point. Shipping points represent major strawberry production regions and are the closest price point to the farm. The second stage is the terminal market. Terminal markets are wholesale markets in major US cities. The third stage is the retail level. Retail level prices are measured as average supermarket prices in the same cities for which terminal market prices are available. Using weekly data, markup equations are estimated from upstream to downstream levels of the …

Occupational Licensing: Protecting The Public Interest Or Protectionism?, Morris M. Kleiner

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

The issue of the government regulation of occupations involves the role of government in reconciling the special interests of the practitioners with those of society. The strictest form of occupational regulation is occupational licensing which is extensive and growing. In 2008, nearly 30 percent of the workforce was required to hold a license up from around 10 percent in 1970. There are potential job loss implications in the growth of occupational licensing for the labor market and the economy. An alternative form of regulation, the certification of occupations, which does not impose a "closed shop" on entry and mobility, may …

Maximising Benefits, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

The recent moves to devolve some of the functions and responsibilities of the federal government to the provinces through the 18th Amendment and the decision of the National Finance Commission (NFC) to allocate a larger portion of divisible tax pool to the provinces are highly commendable. These steps have the potential to overcome some of the structural difficulties and micro-economic distortions that have been keeping Pakistan as an underachiever economically and socially. In a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic society, with one of the federating units being much advanced and enjoying political dominance, de-concentration of powers and equitable sharing of resources among …

Are Big Schools Bad Schools?: Measuring The Effects Of The Number And Size Of Schools On District Costs And Student Achievement, Jamie Steiner

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

As state governments shrink their budgets, more school districts are debating consolidation. In considering school consolidation, governments must evaluate costs per pupil and student achievement. Factors associated with costs per pupil include schools per district, district enrollment, income per individual, percent of pupils eligible for free lunch, pupil-teacher ratio, and average teacher salary. Factors associated with achievement include school enrollment, percent of pupils eligible for free lunch, suspension/expulsion rates, pupil-teacher ratio, and average teacher salary. This paper presents a regression model that analyzes the effects of school enrollment and schools per district on costs per pupil and standardized test passing …

The Value Of Life: Real Risks And Safety-Related Productivity In The Himalaya, Jeremy Goucher, William C. Horrace

Economics - All Scholarship

This paper estimates the value of a statistical life from commercial Himalayan expeditions. Because deaths occur with a fair amount of regularity, fatality rates are calculated for each mountain trail and are, hence, disaggregated measures of risk. Also, since the marginal product of labor in the industry is (in part) the marginal product of safety, our revenue measures may account for unobserved safety-related productivity of guides. Guide safety is explicitly observed by market participants, and is reflected in higher wages for safer guides. Our VSL estimates are about $5 M.

Governance Initiatives, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Newspaper and Magazine Articles

Pakistan's problems of governance do not require as much unknown remedies as they do political will to initiate bold reforms. Unnecessary leakages, high non-development expenditure , and a low tax base have strained the government's fiscal position to the point that without immediate reforms, it will remain caught in chronic stagflation, always spending beyond its means and adding to the unbearable deficit.

While formulating the National Commission for Government Reforms, we conducted a detailed cross-section study of the governance structure and related institutions, We gathered consultants and stakeholders on a single platform to hammer out consensus in terms of trimming …

Civil Service Reform In Pakistan: Capacity, Competence, Courage, And Compassion, Ishrat Husain Dr.

Faculty Research - Talks, Speeches, & Discourse

My remarks this afternoon will be divided into three parts. First, I will dwell on the question: Why reform the Civil Service? What is the rationale and justification for reform? Second, if it is necessary what should be the end-result of the reform and what needs to be done to achieve this objective. Third, what should be the phasing and sequencing of various reforms if there is an agreement on the need, the objective and the content of the reforms. The overall governance structure is important because it is through this structure that economic policies are intermediated and translated into …

Beyond ‘‘Green Buildings:’’ Exploring The Effects Of Jevons’ Paradox On The Sustainability Of Archival Practices, Mark D. Wolfe

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

The sustainability of archival institutions will be greatly affected by attempts to mitigate their carbon footprint to meet the challenges of global climate change. This paper explores how recordkeeping practices may enhance or undermine the sustainability of archives. To enhance sustainability, it is a common practice to increase the efficiency of recordkeeping practices. However, increases to efficiency may lead to a phenomenon known as Jevons’ Paradox. Jevons’ Paradox occurs when improvements in efficiency to a system or process result in an increase in use (instead of a decrease) of a resource. The failure of the paperless office demonstrates Jevons’ Paradox, …

Unintended Social And Economic Consequences Resulting From The Implementation Of New Construction Technologies In The Developing World, Andrew J. South

Theses and Dissertations

One of the key components of international development is to provide adequate shelter for citizens of developing countries. This is often accomplished by governmental, non- governmental, and private organizations that seek to lower the cost, increase the quality, and expand the availability of safe, sustainable housing through the use of innovative technologies. These new technologies can affect the social and/or economic structure within communities. This paper is a case study resulting from the construction of a seventy-one-home village, including infrastructure, near Yogyakarta, Indonesia by a foreign, aid-based non-governmental organization (NGO). The village was relocated less than two kilometers from its …