An empirical note about estimation and forecasting Latin American Forex returns volatility: the role of long memory and random level shifts components

Portuguese Economic Journal - A set of RLS-type models with ARMA and ARFIMA dynamics is estimated and compared in a forecasting exercise with ARFIMA, GARCH and FIGARCH models. It is an extension of...     

Hayek on the essential dispersion of market knowledge

The Review of Austrian Economics - A key insight in Hayek’s thought is the importance of so-called “local knowledge” in economic activity. In The Fatal Conceit, he states that...     

Liking what others “Like”: using Facebook to identify determinants of conformity

In this paper we explore the micro-level determinants of conformity. Members of the social networking service Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We set up a natural field experiment to test whether users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before. To find out to what extent conformity depends on group size and social ties we use three different treatment conditions: (1) one stranger has Liked the content, (2) three strangers have Liked the content, and (3) a friend has Liked the content. The results show that one Like from a single stranger had no impact. However, increasing the size of the influencing group doubled the probability that subjects expressed positive support. Friendship ties were also decisive. People were, on average, four times more likely to press the Like button if a friend, rather than a stranger, had done so before them. The existence of threshold effects in our experiment clearly shows that both group size and social proximity matters when opinions are shaped.     

The scope and scale of the informal food economy of South African urban residential townships: Results of a small-area micro-enterprise census

Growing urbanisation in South Africa is reflected in burgeoning Working class and informal township settlements on the fringes of its major towns and cities. Paired with this is an increasing reliance on cash as the primary means of economic transaction, which has in turn stimulated the growth of micro-enterprise business activities within the township context. This article discusses the findings of an eight-township small-area census which occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Durban townships representing 250 000 residents. The researchers were able to establish the scope and scale of informal food and drink retailing in these localities. Of the 10 049 micro-enterprises located in the study, some 3966 (or 39% of the total) trade in food. These include enterprises in primary production, fresh produce retailing, grocery retailing from house and spaza shops, and informal foodservice enterprises. Food is the basis for much township informal business and plays an important role in making food increasingly affordable and locally accessible, and in creating cash employment. The article builds on the knowledge base of the township informal economy role in bolstering food security needs for the marginalised.     

The US financial crisis and corporate dividend reactions: for better or for worse?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We examine how changes in dividend policy in 2008 as the financial crisis was unfolding influenced firm risk-adjusted returns in the following years....     

Entry limiting agreements: First‐mover advantage,authorized generics,and pay‐for‐delay deals

During patent litigation, pay‐for‐delay (P4D) deals involve a payment from a patent holder of a branded drug to a generic drug manufacturer to delay entry and withdraw the patent challenge. In return for staying out of the market, the generic firm receives a payment, and/or an authorized licensed entry at a later date, but before the patent expiration. We examine why such deals are stable when there are multiple potential entrants. We combine the first‐mover advantage for the first generic with the ability of the branded manufacturer to launch an authorized generic (AG) to show when P4D deals are an equilibrium outcome. We further show that limiting a branded firm's ability to launch an AG before entry by a successful challenger will deter such deals. However, removing exclusivity period for the first generic challenger will not.     

Information flows and crashes in dynamic social networks

We develop a dynamic model of information transmission and aggregation in social networks in which continued membership in the network is contingent on the accuracy of opinions. Agents have opinions about a state of the world and form links to others in a directed fashion probabilistically. Agents update their opinions by averaging those of their connections, weighted by how long their connections have been in the system. Agents survive or die based on how far their opinions are from the true state. In contrast to the results in the extant literature on DeGroot learning, we show through simulations that for some parameterizations the model cycles stochastically between periods of high connectivity, in which agents arrive at a consensus opinion close to the state, and periods of low connectivity, in which agents’ opinions are widely dispersed.

     

Missing the Popular Vote: Pitfalls in US Democracy and Reform Proposals

Intereconomics - Only a few years ago, it was a widespread belief that globalisation would trigger processes of democratisation worldwide. However, even old and established democracies such as the...     

State‐Dependent Forward Guidance and the Problem of Inconsistent Announcements

Forward guidance can be provided as an unconditional promise, i.e. commitment to a specific low policy rate. Alternatively, the promise may include an escape clause, i.e. a condition defining the state of the economy under which the central bank would not keep such a low rate and, instead, it would revert to setting policy under discretion. The escape clause can be expressed as a threshold in terms of a specific variable. The present paper shows that, when such a threshold is expressed in terms of an endogenous variable (e.g. output, inflation), there are cases where it becomes impossible for the central bank to act in a way that is consistent with its promise. Consistency imposes limits on the policy rate that can be set since reverting immediately to the optimal discretionary rate can be incompatible with exceeding the threshold.