A Cross-Country Empirical Analysis of International Reserves

Using data from more than 100 economies for the period of 1975 to 2005, we conduct an extensive empirical analysis of the determinants of international reserve holdings. Four groups of determinants, namely, traditional macro variables, financial variables, institutional variables, and dummy variables that control for individual economies’ characteristics are considered. We find that the relationship between international reserves and their determinants is significantly different between developed and developing economies and is not stable over time. The estimation results indicate that, especially during the recent period, a developed economy tends to hold a lower level of international reserves than a developing one. Furthermore, there is only limited evidence that East Asian economies including China and Japan are accumulating an excessive amount of international reserves.     

Estimating panel data models in the presence of endogeneity and selection

We consider estimation of panel data models with sample selection when the equation of interest contains endogenous explanatory variables as well as unobserved heterogeneity. Assuming that appropriate instruments are available, we propose several tests for selection bias and two estimation procedures that correct for selection in the presence of endogenous regressors. The tests are based on the fixed effects two-stage least squares estimator, thereby permitting arbitrary correlation between unobserved heterogeneity and explanatory variables. The first correction procedure is parametric and is valid under the assumption that the errors in the selection equation are normally distributed. The second procedure estimates the model parameters semiparametrically using series estimators. In the proposed testing and correction procedures, the error terms may be heterogeneously distributed and serially dependent in both selection and primary equations. Because these methods allow for a rather flexible structure of the error variance and do not impose any nonstandard assumptions on the conditional distributions of explanatory variables, they provide a useful alternative to the existing approaches presented in the literature.     

FDI,openness and income

This is an empirical study of the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on income. It presents cross-country evidence that inward FDI is positively correlated with income. In addition, an instrument for FDI is constructed to address the issue of endogeneity. The results show that instrumental-variables (IV) estimates of the impact of FDI on income are positive and greater than OLS estimates, similar to the findings on trade in Frankel and Romer (). The evidence in this paper suggests that inward FDI contributes to higher income, and favours the argument of Irwin and Terviö () that trade openness is subject to measurement error – in particular, trade is an imperfect proxy for many income-enhancing interactions between countries.     

Re-examination of wage, employment, and hours adjustments: what is crucial for differences in the adjustments?

Manufacturing wage, employment, and hours adjustments are significantly different among developed countries, typically between Japan and the US. The problem of explaining the differences is closely related to that of what effect the extent of wage flexibility has on labor market adjustments. However, prevailing theories are invalid or incomplete for explaining the differences. The differences in the adjustments cannot be unrelated with institutional features of the labor market. Indeed, the extent of wage flexibility depends on the differences in the institutional features. Using a new model with such an idea, this paper theoretically re-examines the cause of the differences in the adjustments. The crucial causes are the characteristics of wage flexibility as well as the differences of the institutional features. The characteristics are that wage adjustment is discontinuous, infrequent, and has a lower limit in comparison with changes in demand.     

Productivity growth decomposition with FE-IV approach: Rethinking Thai commercial banks after the financial crisis

To cope with the Asian Financial Crisis, Thai commercial banks have gone through a reconstructing period. This study aims to decompose the Total Factor Productivity growth (TFP) for Thai commercial banking industry with an output distance function. With an unbalanced panel dataset, we used the Fixed Effect (FE) model with Instrumental Variables (IV) to estimate the TFP growth empirically. We found the technical inefficiency change and scale effects were the two major contributors to the recent growth, while the input price effect of the premises and equipment was the major preventer of the growth. Moreover, the Thai commercial banking industry produced in decreasing return to scale, and the input–output allocation was not at the profit maximization optimum under the exogenous prices.     

Class Size,Teacher Hours and Educational Attainment*

We employ a regression‐discontinuity design to identify effects on educational attainment after compulsory school of class size and the number of pupils per weekly teacher hour using administrative rules as instruments. We use Danish administrative panel data. Average class size is 20, about the same as in the US and most European countries. Restricting the sample to observations close to the enrolment discontinuity points where the administrative rules have greatest predictive power, instrumental variables estimates are consistently negative. Estimates from the preferred specification are marginally significant and indicate modest effects in line with earlier studies. Estimates for subgroups are less precise, but they indicate larger effects for pupils from less advantaged backgrounds.     

The Limit Distribution of the Bootstrap for the Unit Root Test Statistic when the Residuals are Dependent

In this article, the unit root test for the AR(1) model with dependent residuals is considered. We adopt a bootstrap procedure to bootstrap the residuals with bootstrap sample size m less than the size n of the original sample. Under the assumptions that m → ∞ and m/n → 0, the convergence in probability of the bootstrap distribution function is established. Research supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 10471126)     

Moment-based estimation of smooth transition regression models with endogenous variables

Nonlinear regression models have been widely used in practice for a variety of time series and cross-section datasets. For purposes of analyzing univariate and multivariate time series data, in particular, smooth transition regression (STR) models have been shown to be very useful for representing and capturing asymmetric behavior. Most STR models have been applied to univariate processes, and have made a variety of assumptions, including stationary or cointegrated processes, uncorrelated, homoskedastic or conditionally heteroskedastic errors, and weakly exogenous regressors. Under the assumption of exogeneity, the standard method of estimation is nonlinear least squares. The primary purpose of this paper is to relax the assumption of weakly exogenous regressors and to discuss moment-based methods for estimating STR models. The paper analyzes the properties of the STR model with endogenous variables by providing a diagnostic test of linearity of the underlying process under endogeneity, developing an estimation procedure and a misspecification test for the STR model, presenting the results of Monte Carlo simulations to show the usefulness of the model and estimation method, and providing an empirical application for inflation rate targeting in Brazil. We show that STR models with endogenous variables can be specified and estimated by a straightforward application of existing results in the literature.     

社会保障的新理念与中国农民扶持性社会保障体制

中国的市场化改革使广大的中国农民直接暴露在现代市场经济风险下,而家庭联产承包制的实施又使改革开放前与计划经济体制相适应的保障体制无法运转,这样,中国广大农民成为了现代市场经济中最没有保障的弱势群体。因此,建立农民社会保障体系的意义重大。中国农民社会保障体制迟迟没有建立的原因有二:其一,传统社会保障理念仅考虑到其工具价值,忽视了其目的价值;其二,农民的组织化程度低,导致他们在社会利益分割过程中没有谈判地位。从建立农民社会保障体制的双重价值出发,建立保障农民生存权和基本发展权的农民扶持性社会保障体制具有重要意义。