Testing for the principal’s monopsony power in agency contracts

We develop a test for the presence of the monopsony power of the livestock integrator (principal) on the market for contract growers (agents) and estimate the model with the data on swine industry contract settlements. A natural test for the monopsony power of the principal would compare the estimated values of the marginal revenue products with the actual payments that agents receive for their services. The problem with implementing this approach comes from the fact that agents’ abilities and actions are unobservable. Our approach is based on estimating the slope of the inverse supply function for grower input using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators. The model specifies the relationships between the observable consequences and unobservable grower characteristics imposing the first order conditions for principal’s profit maximization. The results show that the null hypothesis of no market power cannot be rejected.

Conservation Auctions and Compliance: Theory and Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

Many agri-environmental conservation programs are faced with the problem of imperfect monitoring. This provides farmers with an incentive for noncompliance, because they can receive subsidies without implementing the conservation scheme. In this paper, bidding behavior and auction performance are compared for discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions in an imperfect monitoring environment. Our theoretical analysis suggests that auction performances are equalized between the discriminatory-price and uniform-price auctions. However, laboratory experiments reveal that, although the discriminatory-price auction has an advantage in terms of reducing policy costs, it is more likely to cause adverse selection. As a result, the uniform-price auction tends to have higher efficiency and cost-effectiveness when compliance behavior is taken into account.     

Do Workers’ Remittances Promote Access to Finance? Evidence from Asia-Pacific Developing Countries

This study empirically analyzes the impact of remittance inflows on access to formal financial services using panel data on thirty-eight developing countries in Asia and Oceania between 2001 and 2012. Our results indicate that remittances help to enlarge the national branch network of commercial banks. These findings are robust to changes in the dependent variable, namely, the number of commercial bank branches per person or per area, as well as the estimation method. With regard to control variables, we find that income level and economic openness have positive impacts on the number of bank branches, whereas the inflation rate has a negative impact.     

老龄化与日本的社会保障

日本今年3月发生的大地震和核发电站的泄露事故,给政府和国民敲响警钟,震灾后的复兴,同时也是日本社会保障、社会福利的复兴。本文就日本的老龄化、社会保障、社会福利服务的现状进行分析,同时提出了社会保障构造改革后社会保障政策的诸多问题,并就日本社会保障未来的发展方向提出了思考和建议。     

Information criteria for impulse response function matching estimation of DSGE models

We propose new information criteria for impulse response function matching estimators (IRFMEs). These estimators yield sampling distributions of the structural parameters of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models by minimizing the distance between sample and theoretical impulse responses. First, we propose an information criterion to select only the responses that produce consistent estimates of the true but unknown structural parameters: the Valid Impulse Response Selection Criterion (VIRSC). The criterion is especially useful for mis-specified models. Second, we propose a criterion to select the impulse responses that are most informative about DSGE model parameters: the Relevant Impulse Response Selection Criterion (RIRSC). These criteria can be used in combination to select the subset of valid impulse response functions with minimal dimension that yields asymptotically efficient estimators. The criteria are general enough to apply to impulse responses estimated by VARs, local projections, and simulation methods. We show that the use of our criteria significantly affects estimates and inference about key parameters of two well-known new Keynesian DSGE models. Monte Carlo evidence indicates that the criteria yield gains in terms of finite sample bias as well as offering tests statistics whose behavior is better approximated by the first order asymptotic theory. Thus, our criteria improve existing methods used to implement IRFMEs.     

Representation of non-transferable utility games by coalition production economies

We prove that every compactly generated non-transferable utility (NTU) game can be generated by a coalition production economy. The set of Walrasian payoff vectors for our induced coalition production economy coincides with the inner core of the balanced cover of the original game. This equivalence depends heavily on our representation. We exemplify that this equivalence need not hold in other representations. We also give a sufficient condition for the existence of a Walrasian equilibrium for our induced coalition production economy.     

Efficient estimation and inference in linear pseudo-panel data models

We consider pseudo-panel data models constructed from repeated cross sections in which the number of individuals per group is large relative to the number of groups and time periods. First, we show that, when time-invariant group fixed effects are neglected, the OLS estimator does not converge in probability to a constant but rather to a random variable. Second, we show that, while the fixed-effects (FE) estimator is consistent, the usual t statistic is not asymptotically normally distributed, and we propose a new robust t statistic whose asymptotic distribution is standard normal. Third, we propose efficient GMM estimators using the orthogonality conditions implied by grouping and we provide t tests that are valid even in the presence of time-invariant group effects. Our Monte Carlo results show that the proposed GMM estimator is more precise than the FE estimator and that our new t test has good size and is powerful.     

Retrograde visualization of the portal venous system using CO2 intraarterial digital subtraction angiography

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) intraarterial digital subtraction angiography (IADSA) provides retrograde visualization of the portal vein via a peripheral segmental hepatic artery. IADSA was performed in 12 patients with known hepatic diseases by injecting a peripheral hepatic artery with both CO₂ gas and an iodinated contrast medium. The portal vein was constantly visualized only with CO₂ IADSA in all patients. The injected CO₂ may flow back into the portal vein through an anastomotic system known as the peribiliary or periportal plexus. This new method is safe and useful to image the portal venous system in patients with hepatic malignancy.