Sources of economic growth and stagnation in Iran

There is more than a 10 percentage point difference in the economic performance of Iran in roughly the two decades before and after the Islamic revolution in 1979. This paper aims to explain the difference. A standard measure of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) calculated at the aggregate level shows that over one-third of the difference in economic performance can be explained by the change in TFP growth rates in the two periods. The question is further pursued at the manufacturing level. A time-series cross sectional analysis of the manufacturing sector confirms that TFP growth rates fell after the revolution and did not recover anywhere close to their pre revolution levels even after the Iran–Iraq war. The regression analyses show that decreasing returns to scale and mark-up pricing behavior have developed in the manufacturing sector under the Islamic Republic. A Tornqvist measure of TFP, corrected for market imperfections and non-constant returns to scale technology, is used to explain sources of productivity slowdown. The results show that manufacturing TFP increases with (i) private participation rate in economic activities and (ii) exports. Manufacturing TFP falls with (iii) increase in capital-intensity and (iv) higher entry/exit barriers.     

The social media faces of major global financial service brands

With the advent of social media, brand management has become not only more difficult, but also increasingly critical to the credibility and reputation of firms. Moreover, consumer-generated content and its rapid diffusion takes control over advertising-intended messages away from brand managers. Financial services brand managers will not fully be able to control the destinies of their brands, but at the very least they need to be involved in the conversations that speak about their brand. This article suggests a powerful analytical tool Chernoff Faces, which can add to financial service brand managers’ arsenal.     

On the pooling of cross-sectional and time-series data in the presence of heteroskedasticity

We analyze the effect of heteroskedasticity on log-linear aggregation, and its implications for the pooling of cross-section and aggregate time series data. An empirical analysis of food consumption, based on US family budget survey and aggregate time series data, illustrates.     

TRIVARIATE SUPPORT OF FLAT‐VOLATILITY FORWARD LIBOR RATES

This paper investigates the multivariate support of forward Libor rates in the one‐factor, constant volatilities Libor market model. The comparatively simple bivariate case was solved in Jamshidian (2008) in connection to the recent finding by Davis and Mataix‐Pastor (2007) of positive probability of negative Libor rates in the swap market model. The approach here builds on Jamshidian (2008) but becomes really effective only in the trivariate case, and there particularly for a special “flat‐volatility” case, leading to an analytic solution. The main idea is a certain recursion in the Libor market model by means of which the calculation of the support is reduced to a calculus of variation problem (with bounds on the slope).     

The economic uncertainty and private investment nexus in Iran： Application of the EGARCH model and the ARDL approach

This paper examines the impact of economic uncertainty on private investment in lran. In addition, the authors also examine the impact of other economic factors on the level of private investment. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag （ARDL） approach is applied to investigate the relationship of these variables. The data span is from 1975 to 2007. The results indicate that economic uncertainty has a significant negative effect on private investment. Public investment and the availability of financing have a significant positive effect on private investment, while the impact of output gap and the exchange rate is negative. Hence, government should aim at creating a stable macro-economic environment in order to makes private investment attractive.     

Model selection, estimation and forecasting in VAR models with short-run and long-run restrictions

We study the joint determination of the lag length, the dimension of the cointegrating space and the rank of the matrix of short-run parameters of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model using model selection criteria. We suggest a new two-step model selection procedure which is a hybrid of traditional criteria and criteria with data-dependant penalties and we prove its consistency. A Monte Carlo study explores the finite sample performance of this procedure and evaluates the forecasting accuracy of models selected by this procedure. Two empirical applications confirm the usefulness of the model selection procedure proposed here for forecasting.     

Codependent cycles

This paper extends the work of Engle and Kozicki (1993) to test for co-movement in multiple time series when their cycles are not exactly synchronized. We call these codependent cycles and show that testing and estimation in this case will be a Generalized Method of Moments test and estimation procedure. We also show that the Tiao and Tsay (1985) proposed test for scalar components models of order (0, q) can be seen as a test for codependent cycles based on a consistent, but sub-optimal, estimate of the cofeature vector. We assess the small sample performance of the proposed tests through a series of simulations. Finally we apply this test to investigate comovement between durable and non-durable consumption expenditures.     

The missing link: using the NBER recession indicator to construct coincident and leading indices of economic activity

We use the information content in the decisions of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee to construct coincident and leading indices of economic activity for the United States. We identify the coincident index by assuming that the coincident variables have a common cycle with the unobserved state of the economy, and that the NBER business cycle dates signify the turning points in the unobserved state. This model allows us to estimate our coincident index as a linear combination of the coincident series. We compare the performance of our index with other currently popular coincident indices of economic activity.     

Earnings quality and Rule 10b-5 securities class action lawsuits

This study examines the earnings quality of firms sued under accounting-related Rule 10b-5 securities fraud class action lawsuits, following a decline in their stock prices, relative to earnings quality of a return-matched control sample of firms. Our analysis is conducted in pre- and post-Private Securities Litigation Rule Act (PSLRA) periods. We measure accruals (earnings) quality using the Dechow and Dichev (2002) model, and provide evidence of significantly lower quality earnings (earnings overstatement) in both the pre- and post-PSLRA periods, for the test sample firms in the four quarters immediately prior to the sued quarter, followed by a sharp decline in the level of earnings of the sued quarter and subsequent four quarters. These consistent results in the pre- and post-PSLRA suggest that lower earnings quality is merit-related indicia of evidence of fraud and that accounting based securities class action lawsuits target only firms with lower earnings quality. Our findings suggest that further policy reforms making it more difficult for shareholders to file an accounting based securities class action lawsuit would be unwarranted.