European financial crisis and bank productivity: evidence from Eastern European Countries

The paper examines the productivity levels of the largest banks operating in the Eastern European countries over the period of the ongoing European financial crisis. Specifically, the analysis covers the periods of U.S. subprime crisis, the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. By adopting a fully nonparametric framework, it provides a probabilistic version of a directional input-oriented Malmquist productivity index alongside with its main decomposition. The results from the analysis suggest that banks have faced a deterioration of their productivity levels between the examined periods. It is evident that during the initiation of European sovereign debt crisis, the banks have weakened their ability to utilize efficiently their inputs of production and their ability to realize scale economies.     

The role of health,experience, and educational attainment in agricultural production: Evidence from smallholders in Burkina Faso

We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to data from smallholders in Burkina Faso and assess the role that human capital characteristics play in the agricultural production process. Our results point to the technology‐changing nature of health, education, and experience. However, effects are rather heterogeneous. The productivity elasticity of health is much larger for households in the lowest landholding quintiles, while returns to experience are larger for households in the upper quintile. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that productivity can be stimulated through the allocation of expenditure to social services that enhance certain types of human capital. Interventions aimed at improving the health status of households with smaller landholdings could have particularly strong welfare effects.     

一种动态加权的LDPC译码方法

为了加快低密度奇偶校验（LDPC）码的译码速度，有效改善LDPC码的译码性能，针对校验节点更新过程中的对数似然比（LLR）值的大小，设计了一种LDPC码的动态加权译码方法。以IEEE 802.16e标准的奇偶校验矩阵为例，根据LLR值的变化规律，利用增长因子和抑制因子对和积译码算法和最小和译码算法进行动态加权。仿真结果显示，基于动态加权的译码方法相对于传统译码方法误码率都有明显改进，译码复杂度也有所降低。     

An explanation of each-way wagers in three models of risky choice

Punters may engage in betting on both a selection in an event to finish first or in one of the number of places, e.g. second, third or fourth. When the amounts staked with bookmakers at fixed odds on the win and place are equal, it is called an each-way bet. Each-way bets are apparently popular with punters but inconsistent with prominent models of wagering which assume gamblers are everywhere risk-seeking. In this note, we derive the conditions for win and place bets to be optimal in these three models of risky choice. The mathematical conditions for the each-way wager to be optimal, as opposed to a win and place wager with different stakes, are complicated and appear likely to occur rarely in practice. However, bettors obviously see the attraction in giving themselves two ways to bet on the one horse or two ways to win and betting each way. We suggest part of the ‘each-way’ betting attraction is that they are quick and easy to compute – a heuristic – to solve an otherwise complex betting strategy.     

Factors affecting agricultural land transfer-in in China: a semiparametric analysis

We use interview survey data collected randomly from 2677 farm households in nine provinces of China to understand the role of demographic, economic, land, and village characteristics on agricultural land transfer-in by farmers. Results show that variables such as borrowing from informal sources, household labour availability, percentage of total income from agricultural sources, and the household with village cadre have significant positive effects on land transfer-in. Low economic development and low transportation network availability in a county reduces land transfer-in. We also find that two variables (land holding and land idling) should be entered into the model nonparametrically. Land holding and land idling have U- and L-shaped impacts on land transfer-in, respectively. Land transfer-in has endowment equilibrium and provides Chinese households more opportunities to earn agricultural income, thereby reducing rural poverty.     

Embracing invention similarity for the measurement of vertically overlapping claims

ABSTRACT

Clear and well-defined patent rights can incentivize innovation by granting monopoly rights to the inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention. However, with cumulative innovation, when a product draws from intellectual property held across multiple firms (including fragmented intellectual property or patent thickets), contracting failures may lead to suboptimal economic outcomes. However, an alternative theory, developed by a variety of scholars, contends that patent thickets have a more ambiguous effect. Researchers have developed several measures to gauge the extent and impact of cumulative innovation and the various channels of patent thickets. This paper contends that mis-measurement may contribute to the incoherence and overall lack of consensus within the patent thickets literature. Specifically, the literature is missing a precise measure of vertically overlapping claims. We propose a new measure of vertically overlapping claims that incorporates invention similarity to more precisely identify inventive overlap. The measure defined in this paper will enable more accurate measurement, and allow for novel economic research on cumulative innovation, fragmentation in intellectual property, and patent thickets within and across all patent jurisdictions.     

股票价格稳定性的非参数平滑估计

股票的优质性主要由股票价格的稳定性来决定。通过建立条件风险函数非参数平滑估计的估计方法,证明条件风险函数平滑后的非参数估计值具有一致性和渐进正态性,并将此方法扩展到了截尾数据中。通过蒙特卡罗模拟表明条件风险函数平滑后的非参数估计值在非截尾数据以及截尾数据中的有限样本行为都要优于非平滑的估计值。实证分析中用截尾数据条件风险函数非参数平滑估计方法非参数估计中国14大行业股票价格的稳定性,发现房地产行业的股票价格最不稳定,建筑材料行业的股票价格表现最稳定     

Reliable Inference in Categorical Regression Analysis for Non‐randomly Coarsened Observations

In most surveys, one is confronted with missing or, more generally, coarse data. Traditional methods dealing with these data require strong, untestable and often doubtful assumptions, for example, coarsening at random. But due to the resulting, potentially severe bias, there is a growing interest in approaches that only include tenable knowledge about the coarsening process, leading to imprecise but reliable results. In this spirit, we study regression analysis with a coarse categorical‐dependent variable and precisely observed categorical covariates. Our (profile) likelihood‐based approach can incorporate weak knowledge about the coarsening process and thus offers a synthesis of traditional methods and cautious strategies refraining from any coarsening assumptions. This also allows a discussion of the uncertainty about the coarsening process, besides sampling uncertainty and model uncertainty. Our procedure is illustrated with data of the panel study ‘Labour market and social security' conducted by the Institute for Employment Research, whose questionnaire design produces coarse data.     

Information in stock prices: the case of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

On the day before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the odds of Hillary Clinton winning the presidency, according to political prediction markets, were above 90%. Surprisingly, Donald Trump won the Electoral College handily. In this study, we examine how movements in specific stock prices foreshadowed the eventual outcome. Specifically, we conduct a series of standard event-study tests focused on pharmaceutical companies, which became a focal point during the presidential campaign. Results show that while stocks of pharmaceutical companies significantly underperformed the market prior to the election, prices substantially increased beginning three days before the election outcome. This increase is both statistically significant and economically meaningful and robust to various event-study methodologies. These results suggest that some sectors of the stock market seemed to anticipate the election outcome.     

Exchange rate returns and volatility: the role of time-varying rare disaster risks

This paper provides empirical evidence to the theoretical claim that rare disaster risks have predictability for exchange rate returns and volatility using a nonparametric quantile-based methodology. Using dollar-based exchange rates for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the quantile-causality test shows that indeed rare disaster-risks affects both returns and volatility over the majority of their respective conditional distributions. In addition, these effects are much stronger when compared to those using the British pound, especially in terms of currency returns.