Convergence,technological interdependence and spatial externalities: a spatial dynamic panel data analysis

This study adopts a spatial dynamic panel data approach and spatial quasi-maximum likelihood to re-estimate the speed of growth convergence in 91 countries based on technological interdependence and spatial externalities. We perform a conditional Lagrange multiplier test for spatial error dependence and find some differences to previous studies. First, the switch from a cross-sectional to a dynamic panel data framework enables the estimated rate of conditional convergence to be higher, more accurate and more appropriate for realistic and theoretical expectations. Second, the spatial Durbin model (SDM) is a general form of simplified model that considers spatial error correlation, and its likelihood ratio test for the theoretical model of ‘learning by doing’ effect provides further evidence. Finally, statistical tests find that spatial correlation not only occurs in each variable, but also appears in the error term. Thus, the SDM does not exist in the assumptions associated with the spatial error, which are not necessarily correct.     

Where states and markets meet: the financialisation of sovereign debt management

Financial markets play an indispensable role in the management of sovereign debt, that is, the mechanics of how and from whom governments borrow. This paper suggests a novel, two-dimensional concept to measure the financialisation of sovereign debt management (SDM): (1) the reliance on financial markets as a governance mechanism and (2) the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics. We split this concept into nine indicators and apply it to data from 23 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis illustrates the predominant commonalities across countries, but at the same time, country-specific differences. We interpret them as two sides of the same coin in the light of an overarching trend of increasing alignment to financial markets. This article is not only one of the first cross-national as well as longitudinal studies of the dynamics in SDM; it also reveals that the relationship between finance and governments in the SDM is by no means one-sided.     

糖尿病肾病患者血清脂蛋白(a)和D-二聚体检测的临床研究

目的分析糖尿病肾病患者血清脂蛋白、D-二聚体的水平变化及与糖尿病肾病的关系。方法根据尿白蛋白排泄率(Urinary Albumin Excretion rate,UAE)将134例2型糖尿病(Diabetes Mellitus,DM)患者分为单纯糖尿病组(Simple Diabetic Mellitus,SDM组)和糖尿病肾病组(DN组),200例健康体检者作为正常对照组分别测定各组血清Lp(a)、D-D的水平。结果 SDM组Lp(a)和D-D水平与健康对照组比较无统计学差异(P>0.05),但DN组Lp(a)和D-D水平显著高于健康对照组(P<0.01)。结论 DN患者血清Lp(a)和D-D水平明显升高,在DN的早期诊断和病情监测有一定意义。     

Modelling the participation decision and duration of sporting activity in Scotland

Motivating individuals to actively engage in physical activity due to its beneficial health effects has been an integral part of Scotland's health policy agenda. The current Scottish guidelines recommend individuals participate in physical activity of moderate vigour for 30 min at least five times per week. For an individual contemplating the recommendation, decisions have to be made in regard of participation, intensity, duration and multiplicity. For the policy maker, understanding the determinants of each decision will assist in designing an intervention to effect the recommended policy. With secondary data sourced from the 2003 Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) we statistically model the combined decisions process, employing a copula approach to model specification. In taking this approach the model flexibly accounts for any statistical associations that may exist between the component decisions. Thus, we model the endogenous relationship between the decision of individuals to participate in sporting activities and, amongst those who participate, the duration of time spent undertaking their chosen activities. The main focus is to establish whether dependence exists between the two random variables assuming the vigour with which sporting activity is performed to be independent of the participation and duration decision. We allow for a variety of controls including demographic factors such as age and gender, economic factors such as income and educational attainment, lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, healthy eating and medical history. We use the model to compare the effect of interventions designed to increase the vigour with which individuals undertake their sport, relating it to obesity as a health outcome.     

AN ANALYSIS OF DURATION ON THE DISABILITY SUPPORT PENSION PROGRAM*

The paper examines the factors that determine the duration on the Disability Support Pension (DSP) program using administrative data. We estimate two models based on two competing assumptions: the first model takes the standard assumption in duration models that all recipients will eventually leave the program. The second one takes into account the possibility that there may be some recipients who will never recover from their disabilities and hence not leave the program. Both models indicate that female recipients, recipients who enter DSP at a very young or very old age, recipients with a partner on income support, and recipients who transfer from unemployment benefits have the potential of a longer DSP duration.     

Comparing new Keynesian models in the Euro area: a Bayesian approach

This paper estimates and compares four versions of the sticky price New Keynesian model for the Euro area using a Bayesian approach. We find that the average duration of price contracts is between two and four quarters, while the average duration of wage contracts is estimated to be below two quarters. Both mechanisms of price and wage indexation are not important when autocorrelated price markup shocks are introduced in the model. These results are in stark contrast to Smets and Wouters (2003): when we use their priors, our estimated posterior distributions are similar to theirs, but the models’ fit to the data is worse. We are thankful to the Econometric Modelling Unit at the European Central Bank for providing us with the Euro area data. We also thank two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona (“la Caixa”).     

Examination and Approval of New Patents in an Endogenous Growth Model

This study introduces the examination duration for newly developed goods into a standard R&D-based growth model. Producing such goods requires approval from an authority, and their examination incurs both cost and time. Thus, there is a lag between invention and production. This study investigates the effects of reducing the examination duration on examination backlogs (the number of newly invented goods under examination), economic growth, and welfare. We obtain an inverted-U shaped relationship between backlogs and duration, because reducing the duration decreases backlogs by accelerating the examination process, but simultaneously increases backlogs by promoting R&D and increasing the number of applications. In addition, we demonstrate that reducing the examination duration promotes economic growth. However, a rather short examination duration needs considerable resources as the examination has a higher cost. Thus, an extremely short duration hurts welfare. Our numerical analysis reveals the existence of an optimal examination duration.     

财政分权下地方政府卫生支出的竞争行为研究

分权体制框架下地级市政府在制定医疗卫生支出决策时往往会受到相邻城市相关策略的影响,从而引发城市间政府卫生支出的策略互动行为.文章选取了2007?2013年中国283个城市面板数据,运用动态空间面板模型检验了分权体制下地市级政府卫生支出的策略互动行为,并揭示出财政分权及其城市间空间策略互动对政府卫生支出的影响.研究发现,地市级政府在政府卫生支出上存在显著的互补型策略互动,这种效应在地理距离相近的同省区城市间更为显著.进一步分析发现,财政分权促进了政府卫生服务供给;而无论是短期还是长期,地市级政府间财政分权的策略互动对政府卫生支出产生明显的抑制作用,从而较好地解释了政府卫生支出比重徘徊不前的原因.由此,积极利用竞争、激励机制以及实现财政体制安排的优化变革来引导政府的卫生服务供给将是重要的政策选择.     

Changing economic mechanisms: A model of the transition from budget regulation to the competitive market

Summary In the framework of dynamic equilibrium theory we propose a model of gradual transition from an Economy with centralized budgets regulation to a Market Economy (with self-financing). It is assumed that information about possible change of the economic mechanism affects essentially the behavior of agents. The duration of the transition period is regarded as a random variable. We study conditions when such a transition allows firms to adapt their plans to future markets and guarantees the existence of equilibrium paths. We also discuss the case of Shock Therapy (instantaneous transition) which may cause bankruptcy, jumps in prices and deficits.This work is supported by Russian Foundation of Basic Researches, grant 93-06-10356     

Nonparametric estimation of a dependent competing risks model for unemployment durations

In this paper we simultaneously analyze transitions from unemployment to employment and to nonparticipation. We estimate a dependent competing risks model with nonparametric specifications of the destination-specific duration dependence and unobserved heterogeneity terms, allowing for mutual dependence of the unobserved heterogeneity terms. We use an administrative data set covering all registered French unemployed over the period 1988–1994, stratified by gender type, duration class and exit state. We thank the Editor and three anonymous referees for their useful comments. A preliminary version of this paper was distributed under the title “Individual variation in exit rates from unemployment: a nonparametric multivariate analysis using aggregate data”. The Département de Marché du Travail of the Ministère du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Formation Professionelle of France kindly provided the data.     

Intra‐household allocation of parental leave

We introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behaviour to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave. The concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration. Using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors, we cannot reject Pareto efficiency in childcare sharing. Higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner, respectively. Households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare.     

The impact of sovereign risk on bond duration: Evidence from Asian sovereign bond markets

This paper examines the effect of sovereign risk on bond duration. We compare the sovereign risk-adjusted duration for U.S. dollar-denominated Asian sovereign bonds with their Macaulay duration for both investment grade bonds and speculative grade bonds. We find that the sovereign risk-adjusted duration is significantly shorter than its Macaulay counterpart for all bonds, regardless of their bond rating and their maturity. Further, the “shortening” effect of sovereign risk on duration gets stronger as bond rating deteriorates and in recessionary conditions. Our findings provide strong support for the importance of adjusting for sovereign risk when bond portfolio managers apply the popular duration measure to hedge interest rate risk.     

The anatomy of unemployment dynamics

This paper examines the relation between individual unemployment durations and incidence (inflow size) on the one hand and the time-varying macroeconomic conditions in the economy on the other. We develop a model for the analysis of aggregate unemployment incidence and duration data and estimate this model on quarterly French data over the period 1982-1994 stratified by sex. We find upward trends in both incidence and durations. The former is relatively important for females, the latter for males. Male incidence and durations are countercyclical, with only a minor role for cohort effects on durations. In contrast, female cohorts entering at the top of the cycle have relatively short unemployment spells and the female incidence is, if anything, procyclical. There is strong seasonal variation, in particular in the incidence. Finally, we find relatively small non-monotonic individual duration dependence in the first six quarters of unemployment. Unobserved heterogeneity explains the observed negative duration dependence at these durations. We provide some evidence that negative individual duration dependence, and not heterogeneity, is important at higher durations.     

Multistage R&D competition and patent policy

In this paper a model of multistage R&D patent policy is investigated. We study the impact of the duration of patent protection for intermediate products on R&D races when the discovery of the final product requires the accomplishment of an intermediate step. Using a multistage model where firms choose their levels of research investment at each stage, we find all subgame-perfect equilibria of the game. We also determine how competition affects a firm's level of research investment at different stages of the R&D competition.     

Sudden Stops,Time Inconsistency,and the Duration of Sovereign Debt

We study the sovereign debt duration chosen by the government in the context of a standard model of sovereign default. The government balances off increasing the duration of its debt to mitigate rollover risk and lowering duration to mitigate the debt dilution problem. We present two main results. First, when the government decides the debt duration on a sequential basis, sudden stop risk increases the average duration by 1 year. Second, we illustrate the time inconsistency problem in the choice of sovereign debt duration: governments would like to commit to a duration that is 1.7 years shorter than the one they choose when decisions are made sequentially.     

Shall One Sit “Longer” for a Free Lunch? Impact of Trading Durations on the Realized Variances and Volatility Spillovers

This study examines the effect of trading durations on the realized variance of rupee futures traded in national stock exchange (NSE), India and Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX), Dubai as there exists a difference in the trading durations at these exchanges, where DGCX has longer trading duration. The empirical results suggest that longer trading duration has significantly higher realized variance, and also non-trading durations at NSE account for higher overall realized variance of Rupee Futures. We model the impact of trading durations on intraday and overnight realized variance for rupee futures and estimate a reduced realized volatility of 40–70 bps due to shorter trading duration. We find that non-trading durations at National Stock Exchange account for 60–70% of the overall realized variance of rupee futures. Using MGARCH model with BEKK parameterization, we find evidence of bidirectional volatility spillover from Offshore to Onshore Rupee markets.

     

Business cycle dynamics with duration dependence and leading indicators

Durland and McCurdy [Durland, J.M., McCurdy, T.H., 1994. Duration-dependent transitions in a Markov model of US GNP growth. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 12, 279–288] investigated the issue of duration dependence in US business cycle phases using a Markov regime-switching approach, introduced by Hamilton [Hamilton, J., 1989. A new approach to the analysis of time series and the business cycle. Econometrica 57, 357–384] and extended to the case of variable transition parameters by Filardo [Filardo, A.J., 1994. Business cycle phases and their transitional dynamics. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 12, 299–308]. In Durland and McCurdy’s model duration alone was used as an explanatory variable of the transition probabilities. They found that recessions were duration dependent whilst expansions were not. In this paper, we explicitly incorporate the widely-accepted US business cycle phase change dates as determined by the NBER, and use a state-dependent multinomial Logit modelling framework. The model incorporates both duration and movements in two leading indexes – one designed to have a short lead (SLI) and the other designed to have a longer lead (LLI) – as potential explanatory variables. We find that doing so suggests that current duration is not only a significant determinant of transition out of recessions, but that there is some evidence that it is also weakly significant in the case of expansions. Furthermore, we find that SLI has more informational content for the termination of recessions whilst LLI does so for expansions.     

The impact of preferential trade agreements on the duration of antidumping protection

This paper examines the impact of preferential trade agreements on the duration of antidumping protection. We employ a two-step selection model where the first step accounts for the impact of membership in a preferential trade agreement on the original antidumping determination and the second step estimates the impact of membership in a preferential trade agreement on the duration of the measures. We find the duration of antidumping protection is about 17% shorter for preferential trade agreement members compared with targeted countries that are not preferential trade agreement members. The impact on duration depends largely on whether preferential trade agreements have rules related specifically to antidumping. Preferential trade agreements with rules are associated with a 28% reduction in the duration of protection, whereas the duration for preferential trade agreements without rules is not statistically different from the duration for non-preferential trade agreement countries. While the duration of antidumping measures against China is longer than for other countries, the impact of preferential trade agreement rules is robust to controlling for China.     

WEARING OUT YOUR WELCOME: EXAMINING DIFFERENTIAL MEDICAID ELIGIBILITY OF NEW ENTRANTS AND CONTINUING RECIPIENTS

Until recently, states were permitted to have different “new entrant” and “continuing recipient” income limits for parental Medicaid eligibility by implementing income disregards that changed with spell length. Some states utilized this option—either tightening income limits for the same family over time or loosening them. In this article, we construct a theoretical model of utility‐maximizing workers facing different time‐dependent eligibility thresholds to predict the Medicaid participation and employment behavior of workers with varying wage levels. The model reveals some inter‐temporally perverse incentives created by linking eligibility thresholds to Medicaid duration. Then, we empirically test these predictions using the Survey of Income and Program Participation and a unique compilation of state‐by‐family size Medicaid thresholds for both new and continuing recipients. We find that patterns of Medicaid participation and spell duration are consistent with the predictions of our model. There is also evidence that the individuals predicted by our model to lower their work hours may supply fewer hours of labor. As of January 2014, the Affordable Care Act disallows time‐varying income disregards; our findings suggest that states previously using this strategy will experience an adjustment in Medicaid caseloads and possibly labor market outcomes because of the change. (JEL H4, I1, J2)     

Lagged duration dependence in mixed proportional hazard models

We study the identification of a mixed proportional hazard model with lagged duration dependence when data provide multiple outcomes per stratum. Within strata variation is exploited to non-parametrically identify lagged duration dependence in more general models than in the literature.