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Publication Metadata only A bootstrap method for identifying and evaluating a structural vector autoregression(Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) Hoover, Kevin D.; Perez, Stephen J.; Department of Economics; Demiralp, Selva; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 42533Graph-theoretic methods of causal search based on the ideas of Pearl (2000), Spirtes et al. (2000), and others have been applied by a number of researchers to economic data, particularly by Swanson and Granger (1997) to the problem of finding a data-based contemporaneous causal order for the structural vector autoregression, rather than, as is typically done, assuming a weakly justified Choleski order. Demiralp and Hoover (2003) provided Monte Carlo evidence that such methods were effective, provided that signal strengths were sufficiently high. Unfortunately, in applications to actual data, such Monte Carlo simulations are of limited value, as the causal structure of the true data-generating process is necessarily unknown. In this paper, we present a bootstrap procedure that can be applied to actual data (i.e. without knowledge of the true causal structure). We show with an applied example and a simulation study that the procedure is an effective tool for assessing our confidence in causal orders identified by graph-theoretic search algorithms.Publication Open Access A characterization of the extended serial correspondence(Elsevier, 2015) Heo, Eun Jeong; Department of Economics; Yılmaz, Özgür; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 108638We study the problem of assigning objects to a group of agents. We focus on probabilistic methods that take agents' ordinal preferences over the objects. Importantly, we allow for indifferences among objects. Katta and Sethuraman (2006) propose the extended serial correspondence to solve this problem. Our main result is a characterization of the extended serial correspondence in welfare terms by means of stochastic dominance efficiency, stochastic dominance no-envy and "limited invariance," a requirement we adapt from Heo (2014a). We also prove that an assignment matrix is selected by the extended serial correspondence if and only if it satisfies "non-wastefulness" and "ordinal fairness," which we adapt from Kesten et al.Publication Metadata only A comparative study of returns to education of urban men in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey(Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2009) Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad; Assaad, Ragui; Department of Economics; Tunalı, Fehmi İnsan; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 105635This paper presents a comparative study of private returns to schooling of urban men in Egypt, Iran, and Turkey using similar survey data and a uniform methodology. We employ three surveys for each country that span nearly two decades, from the 1980s to 2006, and, to increase the comparability of the estimates across surveys, we focus on urban men 20-54 years old and in full time wage and salary employment. Our aim is to learn how the monetary signals of rewards that guide individual decisions to invest in education are shaped by the institutions of education and labor markets in these countries. Our estimates generally support the stylized facts of the institutions of education and labor markets in Middle Eastern countries. Their labor markets have been described as dominated by the public sector and therefore relatively inflexible, and their education systems as more focused on secondary and tertiary degrees than teaching practical and productive skills. Returns in all countries are increasing in years of schooling, which is contrary to the Mincer assumption of linear returns but consistent with overemphasis on secondary and tertiary degrees. Low returns to vocational training relative to general upper secondary, which have been observed in many developing countries, are observed in Egypt and Iran, but not Turkey. This pattern of returns across countries seems to correspond to how students are selected into vocational and general upper secondary tracks, which is an important part of the education institutions of these countries, and the fact that Turkey's economy is more open than the other two. Greater competitiveness in all three countries over time seems to have increased returns to university education and in few cases to vocational education, but not to general high school.Publication Open Access A comparison of game-theoretic models for parallel trade(World Scientific Publishing, 2018) Gnecco, Giorgio; Pammolli, Fabio; Department of Economics; Alpanda, Berna Tuncay; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and EconomicsWithin the EU Single Market for medicines, differences in drug prices, regulations, and transaction costs may create, under suitable conditions, arbitrage opportunities well before patent expiration, giving an incentive to the occurrence of parallel trade. When this is permitted, parallel traders may obtain a profit from buying drugs in a country where prices are lower, then re-selling them in a country where prices are higher. This phenomenon may came inefficiencies from a global welfare perspective, and reduce the manufacturers' incentive to invest in Research and Development (R & D). Given this framework, in this paper, we investigate the efficiency (expressed in terms of the price of anarchy) of the subgame-perfect Nash equilibria associated with five dynamic noncooperative game-theoretic models for the parallel trade of pharmaceuticals. We also compare such models with regard to the manufacturer's incentive to invest in R & D. More specifically, first we find in closed form the optimal value of the global welfare of two countries, which is obtained by solving a suitable quadratic optimization problem modeling the decision-making process of a global planner. Then, we use such a result. to evaluate and compare the prices of anarchy of five games modeling the interaction between a manufacturer in the first country and a potential parallel trader in the second country. The first three games refer, respectively, to the cases of no parallel trade threat, parallel trade threat, and parallel trade occurrence at equilibrium. Then, we investigate two modifications of the third game, in which its transfer payment from the potential parallel trader to the manufacturer is, respectively, removed/determined by Nash bargaining. For completeness, we also consider a decision-theoretic model of no parallel trade threat. For what concerns the incentive for the manufacturer to invest in R & D, the results of our numerical comparison show that the decision-theoretic model of no parallel trade threat is always the one with the highest incentive, whereas the two game-theoretic models of parallel trade threat/occurrence that do not include the transfer payment provide typically the lowest incentives. Moreover, the latter two models have the highest prices of anarchy (i.e., their equilibria have the lowest efficiencies). From a policy-making perspective, improvements are obtained if suitable countermeasures are taken to help the manufacturer recover from the costs of R & D, such as the inclusion of a transfer payment in the model.Publication Metadata only A dynamic asset pricing model with time-varying factor and idiosyncratic risk(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2009) Department of Economics; Glabadanidis, Paskalis; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/AThis paper uses a multivariate GaRCH model to account for time variation in factor loadings and idiosyncratic risk in improving the performance of the CaPM and the three-factor Fama-French model. I show how to incorporate time variation in betas and the second moments of the residuals in a very general way. Both the static and conditional CaPM substantially outperform the three-factor model in pricing industry portfolios. Using a dynamic CaPM model results in a 30% reduction in the average absolute pricing error of size/book-to-market portfolios. ad hoc analysis shows that the market beta of a value-minus-growth portfolio decreases whenever the default premium increases as well as during economic recessions.Publication Metadata only A general equilibrium analysis of state and private colleges and access to higher education in the US(Elsevier, 2017) Epple, Dennis; Romano, Richard; Sieg, Holger; Department of Economics; Sarpça, Sinan; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 52406We develop a general equilibrium model of the market for undergraduate higher education that captures the coexistence of public and private colleges, the large degree of quality differentiation among them, and the tuition and admission policies that emerge from their competition for students. A quantitative version of the model matches well estimates of enrollment elasticities, variation in need-based and merit-based institutional aid with, respectively, student income and ability, and aggregate characteristics of U.S. higher education including college attendance in public and private schools, tuition levels, and the provision of federal aid. Predictions about the provision of federal aid and the distribution of students across colleges by ability and income match the empirical counterparts well. We use the model to examine the consequences of federal and state aid policies. A one-third increase in the maximum federal aid increases college attendance by 6% of the initial college population, most of the increase being in state colleges and mainly of poor students. Elite private colleges reduce institutional aid and use the net funding gain to spend more on educational inputs and to substitute some highly able poor students for less able rich students. Reductions in federal or state aid result in substantially reduced attendance mainly by poor students. Reductions of support to state colleges induce private colleges to increase enrollments modestly and improve in quality as demand shifts toward them.Publication Open Access A kidney exchange clearinghouse in New England(American Economic Association (AEA), 2005) Roth, Alvin E.; Ünver, M. Utku; Department of Economics; Sönmez, Tayfun; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and EconomicsPublication Metadata only A model-independent measure of aggregate idiosyncratic risk(Elsevier, 2008) Cakici, Nusret; Levy, Haim; Department of Economics; Bali, Turan; Other; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/AThis paper introduces a model-independent measure of aggregate idiosyncratic risk, which does not require estimation of market betas or correlations and is based on the concept of gain from portfolio diversification. The statistical results and graphical analyses provide strong evidence that there are significant level and trend differences between the average idiosyncratic volatility measures of Campbell et al. [Campbell, J.Y., Lettau, M., Malkiel, B.G., and Xu, Y., 2001, Have individual stocks become more volatile? An empirical exploration of idiosyncratic risk, journal of Finance 56, 1-43.] and the new methodology. Although both approaches indicate a noticeable increase in the firm-level idiosyncratic risk, the volatility measure of CLMX is greater and has a stronger upward trend than the new idiosyncratic volatility measure. For both measures of idiosyncratic risk, the upward trend is found to be stronger for smaller. lower-priced, and younger firms. The analytical and empirical results show that the significant upward trend in the differences of the two idiosyncratic volatility measures is related to the increase in the cross-sectional dispersion of the volatility of individual stocks.Publication Metadata only A note on the geometric ergodicity of a nonlinear AR-ARCH model(Elsevier Science Bv, 2010) Saikkonen, Pentti; Department of Economics; Meitz, Mika; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/AThis note studies the geometric ergodicity of nonlinear autoregressive models with conditionally heteroskedastic errors. A nonlinear autoregression of order p (AR(p)) with the conditional variance specified as the conventional linear autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model of order q (ARCH(q)) is considered. Conditions under which the Markov chain representation of this nonlinear AR-ARCH model is geometrically ergodic and has moments of known order are provided. The obtained results complement those of Liebscher [Liebscher, E., 2005. Towards a unified approach for proving geometric ergodicity and mixing properties of nonlinear autoregressive processes, journal of Time Series Analysis, 26,669-689] by showing how his approach based on the concept of the joint spectral radius of a set of matrices can be extended to establish geometric ergodicity in nonlinear autoregressions with conventional ARCH(q) errors.Publication Metadata only A note on the valuation of compound options(John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2002) N/A; Department of Economics; Lajeri-Chaherli, Fatma; Faculty Member; Department of Economics; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/AThe value of a compound option, an option on an option, has been derived by Geske (1976) using Fourier integrals. This article presents two alternative proofs to derive the value of a compound option. One proof is based on the martingale approach, which provides a simple and powerful tool for valuing contingent claims, The second proof uses the expectation of a truncated bivariate normal variable. These proofs allow for an intuitive interpretation of the three elements constituting the value of a compound option.