Models to date the business cycle: The Italian case

The problem of dating the business cycle has recently received many contributions, with a lot of proposed statistical methodologies, parametric and non-parametric. In general, these methods are not used in official dating, which is carried out by experts, who use their subjective evaluations of the state of economy. In this work we try to apply some statistical procedures to obtain an automatic dating of the Italian business cycle in the last 30 years, checking differences among various methodologies and with the ISAE chronology. The purpose of this exercise is to verify if purely statistical methods can reproduce the turning points detection proposed by economists, so that they could be fruitfully used in official dating. To this end parametric as well as non-parametric methods are employed. The analysis is carried out both aggregating results from single time series and directly in a multivariate framework. The different methods are also evaluated with respect to their ability to timely track (ex post) turning points.     

Bank performance and convergence during the financial crisis: Evidence from the ‘old’ European Union and Eurozone

This paper investigates the process of banking integration in the EU15 countries and the Eurozone by testing for convergence in bank efficiency among commercial banks. We use a two-step approach: First we estimate efficiency by applying an innovative methodological approach that treats banks’ non-performing loans as an undesirable output. Second, we apply the Phillips and Sul (2007) panel convergence methodology to assess the convergence process in European banking. Our results indicate an overall decline in efficiency and no evidence of group convergence following the financial crisis. However, we find the presence of club formation with typically weak convergence. The heterogeneity displayed by the transition parameters for the individual countries and the notable decrease in competition levels post 2008 highlight the impact of the financial crisis on the integration process.     

Economies of scale in the Swedish sawmill industry

In this study, scale elasticity and optimal size of the Swedish sawmill industry is investigated. An input distance function is used to compute scale elasticity. The result of the study shows that the average scale elasticity is above 1, indicating existence of economies of scale in the industry. By comparing the size of the average input - output vectors with the inefficiency adjusted input vector and the output vector for scale efficient units, we could see that, in general, there are gains to be made by expansion. However, some units may gain from becoming smaller.     

Economic Theory and Econometric Practice: Parametric Efficiency Analysis

Parametric efficiency analysis is one of the most investigated areas in applied production economics. Nevertheless, the vast majority of empirical studies are not accompanied by a thorough theoretical interpretation of the underlying functional form and the obtained estimates. The robustness of policy suggestions based on inferences from efficiency measures nevertheless crucially depends on theoretically well-founded estimates. This research contribution adresses parametric efficiency measurement by critically reviewing the theoretical consistency of recently published technical efficiency estimates. The theoretical concerns are verified by empirical applications confirming the need for a posteriori checking the regularity of the estimated frontier by the researcher and, if necessary, the a priori imposition of the theoretical requirements. Bootstrapping based stochastic simulations of a simple parametric efficiency model by using different flexible functional forms confirmed the severeness of the theoretical concerns especially with respect to the merely locally restrictable translog specification.     

抛物型扩散模型参数识别的正则化方法

经济计量模型参数识别是对观察的经济数据进行分析而得到经济结果的方法。从数学上讲属于反问题,而这类问题大多是不适定的。本文针对一类典型的抛物型扩散模型采用处理不适定问题的Tikhonov正则化方法来求解。即采用先离散化后正则化的策略利用在误差水平已知的情况下具有三阶收敛速率的算法来处理数值微分,并基于一种快速选择正则参数的混合算法计算正则解。同时对待辨识的分布参数线性和非线性依赖于观测数据两种情况分别进行了数值试验。     

Comparison of Some Bayesian Analyses of Heterogeneity in Group Life Insurance

Norberg (1989) analyses the heterogeneity in a portfolio of group life insurances using a parametric empirical Bayesian approach. In the present paper the model of Norberg is compared to a parametric fully Bayesian model and to a non-parametric fully Bayesian model.     

新疆贫困县影响因素非参数模型分析

本文根据新疆83个县的调查年鉴数据,运用Wilks’lambda分析方法和Wilcoxon秩和方法筛选出了影响新疆贫困县的最主要变量,并利用非参数K近邻判别模型对新疆各县进行了是否贫困的识别。本文在分析了影响新疆贫困县的最主要因素基础上,对新疆扶贫措施提出了可行性建议：加强贫困地区畜牧业和加工工业的发展,增加地方财政收入,加大边境县的财政扶持力度。     

Seasonality and momentum across national equity markets

This paper examines seasonality and momentum jointly across national equity markets at the index level. We find that seasonality and momentum are almost uncorrelated and appear to arise from different global or local risk factors, rather than from different loadings on the same risk factors. Employing a trading strategy that integrates seasonality and momentum parametrically, we confirm our conclusion about the relationship between seasonality and momentum: while the pure seasonality and momentum strategies individually generate sizable and significant returns, the combination strategy significantly outperforms the pure strategies in a way that is quantitatively consistent with their lack of correlation.     

基于参数模型的国债市场利率曲线的估计

即期利率和远期利率曲线是金融行业中最为基本和重要的工具。在对利率期限结构参数模型中被广泛运用的NS模型和Svensson模型进行比较分析的基础上,估计了我国国债市场的即期利率和远期利率曲线。实证研究表明,Svensson模型在以最小化收益率误差的估计方法下,能够较理想地构造中国国债市场的即期利率曲线和远期利率曲线。