From central planning towards a market economy: The role of ownership and competition in Vietnamese firms’ productivity

This paper examines the role of ownership and market competition in Vietnamese firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) from 2001 to 2011. Making use of a large panel dataset of manufacturing firms, we find that, on average, both foreign-owned enterprises (FOEs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have performed better than privately owned enterprises (POEs) in terms of their TFP levels. However, while FOEs’ TFP ranked the highest in the period 2001–2006, SOEs “closed the gap” in the period 2007–2011. Moreover, we find that market competition has been effective in enhancing average firm productivity and in reducing the gaps in efficiency across ownership types. SOEs’ remarkable performance may be linked to several concurrent factors experienced during the period 2001–2011, namely, the process of restructuring the state sector during the 2000s, the increased economic integration due to the country's accession to the World Trade Organization (2007) and, finally, the preferential access to financial capital and land granted to SOEs. While some evidence supports SOEs’ equitization as an explanation for their remarkable productivity performance, WTO accession and cheaper access to inputs do not fully explain it.     

Which are the determinants of green purchase behaviour? A study of Italian consumers

Green purchase behaviour is receiving a growing attention in the academic community, as understanding it is crucial for the growing number of companies developing and marketing green products. In order to provide a broader and novel picture of the phenomenon, this study extends the widely used Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model in several ways, through a large survey of Italian consumers. First, three dimensions of green purchase behaviour are considered, namely, the willingness to pay a premium price, the green purchase frequency and the green purchase satisfaction. Second, several antecedents are considered simultaneously. Third, new (consumer creativity) or so far marginally studied (materialism and green practices) antecedents are included. Fourth, the mediating roles of green purchase satisfaction and willingness to pay a premium price in the link between the considered antecedents and the frequency of green purchase are investigated. Results show that the three dimensions of green purchase behaviour have different antecedents, so highlighting that green purchase behaviour is a multi-faceted phenomenon that should not be studied as a single general concept. Personal norms and value for money emerged to be very relevant predictors. The significant effects of creativity, materialism and green practices provide evidence that extending the TPB model with these three antecedents is useful to more deeply understand green purchase behaviour. Green purchase satisfaction is the strongest predictor of purchase frequency and mediates the effects of personal norms and value for money.     

DETECTING AND ANALYZING THE EFFECTS OF TIME-VARYING PARAMETERS IN DSGE MODELS

We study how structural parameter variations affect the decision rules and economic inference. We provide diagnostics to detect parameter variations and to ascertain whether they are exogenous or endogenous. A constant parameter model poorly approximates a time-varying data generating process (DGP), except in a handful of relevant cases. Linear approximations do not produce time-varying decision rules; higher-order approximations can do this only if parameter disturbances are treated as decision rule coefficients. Structural responses are time invariant regardless of order of approximation. Adding endogenous variations to the parameter controlling leverage in Gertler and Karadi's model substantially improves the fit of the model.     

Pricing Critical Illness Insurance from Prevalence Rates: Gompertz versus Weibull

The pricing of critical illness insurance requires specific and detailed insurance data on healthy and ill lives. However, where the critical illness insurance market is small or national commercial insurance data needed for premium estimates are unavailable, national health statistics can be a viable starting point for insurance ratemaking purposes, even if such statistics cover the general population, are aggregate, and are reported at irregular intervals. To develop a critical illness insurance pricing model structured on a multiple state continuous and time-inhomogeneous Markov chain and based on national statistics, we do three things: First, assuming that the mortality intensity of healthy and ill lives is modeled by two parametrically different Weibull hazard functions, we provide closed formulas for transition probabilities involved in the multiple state model we propose. Second, we use a dataset that allows us to assess the accuracy of our multiple state model as a good estimator of incidence rates under the Weibull assumption applied to mortality rates. Third, the Weibull results are compared to corresponding results obtained by substituting two parametrically different Gompertz models for the Weibull models of mortality rates, as proposed previously. This enables us to assess which of the two parametric models is the superior tool for accurately calculating the multiple state model transition probabilities and assessing the comparative efficiency of Weibull and Gompertz as methods for pricing critical illness insurance.     

A Methodological Note on Long-Period Positions

This brief paper seeks to overcome a number of methodologicaldisagreements among economists who use the long-period methodof analysis. In particular, it attempts to clarify the key distinctionsbetween convergence and stability, convergence and gravitationand chronological and theoretical persistence. The conclusionis that the theoretical soundness of the long-period methoddepends on the convergence of actual magnitudes towards theirlong-period counterparts, an empirical issue to which theoreticalconsiderations of stability are irrelevant.     

One‐Way Compatibility,Two‐Way Compatibility and Entry in Network Industries

We study the strategic choice of compatibility between two initially incompatible network goods in a two‐stage game played by an incumbent and an entrant firm. Compatibility may be achieved by means of a converter. We derive a number of results under different assumptions about the nature of the converter (one‐way vs two‐way), the existence of property rights and the possibility of side payments. With incompatibility, entry deterrence occurs for sufficiently strong network effects. In the case of a two‐way converter, which can only be supplied by the incumbent, incompatibility will result in equilibrium unless side payments are allowed and the network externalities are sufficiently low. When both firms can build a one‐way converter and there are no property rights on the necessary technical specifications, the unique equilibrium involves full compatibility. Finally, when each firm has property rights on its technical specifications, full incompatibility is observed at the equilibrium with no side payments; when these are allowed the entrant sells access to its network to the incumbent which refuses to do the same and asymmetric one‐way compatibility results in equilibrium.     

Factor vector autoregressive estimation: a new approach

In this paper a new approach to factor vector autoregressive estimation, based on Stock and Watson (Implications of dynamic factor models for VAR analysis, NBER Working Paper, no. 11467, 2005), is introduced. In addition to sharing all the relevant features of the Stock–Watson approach, in its static formulation, the proposed method has the advantage of allowing for a more clear-cut interpretation of the global factors, as well as for the identification of all idiosyncratic shocks. An application to large-scale macroeconometric modelling is also provided. The authors are grateful to an anonymous referee for constructive comments and to MIUR (PRIN project 2005) for financial support.     

Risk measures with the CxLS property

In the present contribution, we characterise law determined convex risk measures that have convex level sets at the level of distributions. By relaxing the assumptions in Weber (Math. Finance 16:419–441, 2006), we show that these risk measures can be identified with a class of generalised shortfall risk measures. As a direct consequence, we are able to extend the results in Ziegel (Math. Finance, 2014, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mafi.12080/abstract) and Bellini and Bignozzi (Quant. Finance 15:725–733, 2014) on convex elicitable risk measures and confirm that expectiles are the only elicitable coherent risk measures. Further, we provide a simple characterisation of robustness for convex risk measures in terms of a weak notion of mixture continuity.     

The Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 on Defined Benefit Pension Contributions*

This study examines the effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) on corporate defined benefit pension contributions. The TCJA decreases the corporate tax rate from 35 percent in 2017 to 21 percent in 2018 and thereafter. This change incentivizes firms to increase 2017 pension contributions to take advantage of tax deductions at a higher rate. Consistent with this incentive, we find firms increase defined benefit pension contributions by an average of 25 to 31 percent in 2017 compared with earlier years. We also find that taxpaying firms are the primary contributors. Further, taxpaying firms with high levels of pension-related deferred tax assets contribute over three times as much as taxpaying firms with low levels of pension-related deferred tax assets. We also find firms that increase pension contributions in 2017 reduce 2018 contributions, consistent with intertemporal income shifting rather than a permanent change in pension funding strategy.