Determinants of Income Growth in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Labor Markets

This article analyzes determinants of growth across labor markets in the United States, using a production function approach based on four inputs: labor, manufacturing investment, human capital investment, and public capital investment. We find little role for public capital investment in growth, but that manufacturing investment spurred growth in nonmetropolitan areas, in contrast to metropolitan areas. We also find that human capital investment mattered more for metropolitan areas than for nonmetropolitan areas. Further, the presence of more colleges and universities, more household amenities, and lower tax rates are all found to have encouraged human capital accumulation in U.S. labor markets.     

A Multivariate Evaluation of Ex ante Risks Associated with Fed Cattle Production

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate production risks faced by fed cattle producers. We do this by jointly modeling a group of cattle production yield risk factors using a multivariate dynamic regression model. The proposed econometric model estimates parameters that influence the mean and variance of production yield factors, as well as the covariance between variables, while accounting for a high degree of censoring through the use of a dynamic multivariate Tobit model. The model provides insights into the relationship between production yield factors in fed cattle production.     

The boundaries of firms as information barriers

When contracts are incomplete, the property‐rights theory of firms suggests that ownership of physical assets provides better outside options, which in turn strengthen the owner's incentives to invest in the enterprise. This approach is less suitable for human capital firms such as management consulting that lack physical assets. This article develops an alternative theory for integration that sheds light on the boundaries of human capital firms. In particular, when a relationship between parties includes large potential externalities, reducing the outside option of each party will be beneficial. Integration provides this reduction by blurring the contribution of individual parties within the firm, and thus lowering their independent market valuation. Unlike some results in the property‐rights literature, the results here are robust to variations in ex post bargaining solution.     

Performance assessment and improvement of control charts for statistical batch process monitoring

This paper describes the concepts of statistical batch process monitoring and the associated problems. It starts with an introduction to process monitoring in general which is then extended to batch process monitoring. The performance of control charts for batch process monitoring is discussed by means of two performance indices: the overall type I error and the action signal time. Problems associated with the existing approach are discussed and highlighted. Improvements are suggested and checked with the performance indices. To evaluate the effect of the proposed improvements as well as to assess the performance of the existing approach, an industrial batch production process is used.     

Do Government Subsidies Stimulate Training Expenditure? Microeconometric Evidence from Plant-Level Data

This paper examines whether financial assistance provided by government induces firms to spend more of their own funds on training expenditures, using plant-level data for the Republic of Ireland. We pay particular attention to the potential problems in such an evaluation study, namely selectivity and endogeneity, by first identifying a valid counterfactual for grant receiving plants via a matching estimator and then employing a difference-in-differences technique on this matched sample. Our results show that there are differences in causal effects between domestic and foreign-owned plants. For the former, we find clear evidence that grant receipt stimulates private expenditure, whereas there are no statistically significant effects for foreign-owned plants based in Ireland.     

Demographic Issues in Longevity Risk Analysis

Fundamental to the modeling of longevity risk is the specification of the assumptions used in demographic forecasting models that are designed to project past experience into future years, with or without modifications based on expert opinion about influential factors not represented in the historical data. Stochastic forecasts are required to explicitly quantify the uncertainty of forecasted cohort survival functions, including uncertainty due to process variance, parameter errors, and model misspecification errors. Current applications typically ignore the latter two sources although the potential impact of model misspecification errors is substantial. Such errors arise from a lack of understanding of the nature and causes of historical changes in longevity and the implications of these factors for the future. This article reviews the literature on the nature and causes of historical changes in longevity and recent efforts at deterministic and stochastic forecasting based on these data. The review reveals that plausible alternative sets of forecasting assumptions have been derived from the same sets of historical data, implying that further methodological development will be needed to integrate the various assumptions into a single coherent forecasting model. Illustrative calculations based on existing forecasts indicate that the ranges of uncertainty for older cohorts' survival functions will be at a manageable level. Uncertainty ranges for younger cohorts will be larger and the need for greater precision will likely motivate further model development.     

Optimal Portfolio Allocation under Higher Moments

We evaluate how departure from normality may affect the allocation of assets. A Taylor series expansion of the expected utility allows to focus on certain moments and to compute the optimal portfolio allocation numerically. A decisive advantage of this approach is that it remains operational even for a large number of assets. While the mean‐variance criterion provides a good approximation of the expected utility maximisation under moderate non‐normality, it may be ineffective under large departure from normality. In such cases, the three‐moment or four‐moment optimisation strategies may provide a good approximation of the expected utility.     

User experience on mobile video appreciation: How to engross users and to enhance their enjoyment in watching mobile video clips

In the past few years consumers have enjoyed consuming video content on a growing number of devices including the traditional television, personal computers, mobile phone and tablets. Each device has its own technical attributes and associated consumption characteristics. This research examines the differential effects of user experience on engagement during video consumption in the mobile and desktop environments. We have experimented with different situations related to the genre, the sequence of playing, the extent of interruption, the timing of the interruption, and length of the video clips. Our model was quantitatively tested, with 270 users taking part in a between subject experiment.In the mobile environment, our results provide evidence that sensory experience is a significant factor for enjoyment and engagement with the video, while emotional response is not. The reverse is true for the desktop environment. Learning curve factors work differently in the two environments. User enjoyment and engagement are significantly moderated by learning curve factors in the mobile environment only. The result is robust as it is true for both previous learning (usage experience with the device), and on-the-go experience (sequencing of video clips). Attention span only affects engagement and enjoyment in the desktop environment. Outside interruption only affects engagement and enjoyment in the mobile environment.Our findings can inform commercial practices on the video design and user interface, and also enhance our understanding of the contextual dependency of the theoretical concept of engagement in mobile entertainment.