Marriage strategy among the European nobility

We use a unique dataset to analyze the marriage patterns of the British and German nobility from the 1500s to the 1800s, and discuss the differences in institutions between the two countries. Historical evidence shows that: nobles tended to marry nobles with identical title; and, German marriages were characterized by a higher degree of homogamy in titles than British marriages. Moreover, we show that German data exhibit lower odds of marriage than British among nobles and commoners, and hence provide evidence of a more stratified society. Finally, we propose a diff-in-diff exercise to test the correlation between highly restrictive marriage laws and marital sorting in Germany.     

Sources of time-varying exchange rate exposure

We report evidence of a time-varying link between returns on national stock market indexes and exchange rate returns (exchange rate exposure). We use this evidence to analyze the sources of changes over time in exchange rate exposure. Using monthly data for 14 industrialized countries for the period 1975–2006, we report evidence of a cointegration relation between exchange rate exposure and the industry composition of a country’s imports, and weaker evidence of a cointegration relation between exchange rate exposure and openness to trade.     

Corruption,market quality,and entry deterrence in emerging economies

In many emerging economies incumbent firms often use dubious means to deter entry of other firms. We analyze this scenario in a three‐stage game of entry deterrence. The incumbent has incomplete information about the entrant's costs but can increase this cost by resorting to unfair means (e.g. bribing a politician who harms the entrant). We completely characterize the optimal bribe and show that this depends on the “fairness index” and the “differentiation” parameter. We also show that zero bribes need not maximize welfare and market quality. Our results seem to be compatible with anecdotal evidence from emerging economies such as India.     

The Fischer Black Hypothesis: Some Time-Series Evidence

We estimate an ARCH-M model to analyze the relationship between the conditional standard deviation of real gross national product (GNP) and its growth rate for the period 1871-1993. We find that variability significantly increases output growth rates. In addition, impulse response functions show that the effect of variability on growth rates is dynamic. These results provide evidence in favor of Black's (1987) business cycle hypothesis.     

Policy Makers' Preferences,Party Ideology,and the Political Business Cycle

We generate data on the relative preferences of policy makers for inflation and output stability and reexamine how policy makers and political parties behave for 24 countries by using this new approach. This behavior is essential in both the partisan cycle models and the opportunistic political cycle analysis. Our evidence suggests that right-wing parties exhibit a higher relative preference toward stabilizing inflation than left-wing parties. We obtain mixed results on the opportunistic behavior of incumbent parties. Finally, when we analyze the behavior of left and right ideologies separately, we find overwhelming support for party resemblance in the electoral year and strong evidence of opportunistic conduct by right-wing parties.     

Regional growth and migration: a Japan-United States comparison

"Do poor economies grow faster than rich ones? This...economic question...is analyzed in this paper using two regional data sets: 47 prefectures in Japan and 48 states of the United States. We find clear evidence of convergence in both countries: poor prefectures and states grow faster. We also find that there is intraregional as well as interregional convergence. We analyze the cross-sectional standard deviation across prefectures and states.... Finally we study the determinants of the rates of regional in-migration.... We find little evidence in favor of the argument that population movements are the reason why we find convergence across economies."     

Resource abundance and economic growth in China

This paper revisits the resource curse phenomenon in China and differs from the previous studies in four respects: (i) City-level data is used; (ii) A spatial variable is constructed to estimate the diffusion effect of natural resources among cities in the same province; (iii) The impact of resource abundance on economic development is investigated not only at the city level but also at the prefectural level in China; (iv) We use a functional coefficient regression model to deal with city-specific heterogeneity and, at the same time, analyze the transmission mechanism of the resource curse phenomenon. Our empirical results show that there is no significant evidence to support the existence of a resource curse phenomenon in China. On the other hand, we find that the degree of natural resource abundance in a city has a positive diffusion effect on the economic growth of neighboring cities within the same province at the city level, but not at prefectural levels. We attribute this to the urban bias policy.     

Robust determinants of growth in Asian developing economies: A Bayesian panel data model averaging approach

This paper investigates the determinants of growth in the Asian developing economies. We use Bayesian model averaging (BMA) in the context of a dynamic panel data growth regression to overcome the uncertainty over the choice of control variables. In addition, we use a Bayesian algorithm to analyze a large number of competing models. Among the explanatory variables, we include a nonlinear function of inflation that allows for threshold effects. We use an unbalanced panel data set of 27 Asian developing countries over the period 1980–2009. Our empirical evidence on the determinants of growth suggests that an economy's investment ratio is positively correlated to growth, whereas government consumption expenditure and terms of trade are negatively correlated. We also find evidence of a nonlinear relationship between inflation and economic growth, that is, inflation impedes economic growth when it exceeds 5.43% but does not have any significant effect on growth below that level.     

Land reform and peasant revolution. Evidence from 1930s Spain

We analyze the impact of failed land reform on peasant conflict in Spain before the Civil War using a municipal data set with monthly observations of peasant conflict in Andalusia from April 1931 to July 1936. We find temporary occupations of land were rare and not correlated with either organized reaction to land reform or the existence of a large pool of beneficiaries. Potential beneficiaries of reform struck more often in the period of land reform deployment, especially in towns with a legacy of domination by a noble family and no previous experience of reform. There is some evidence that actual land reform implementation reduced strikes, most prominently in towns that had not been affected by land reform until the 1930s. We argue both sets of evidence suggest that faster re-distribution would have reduced conflict and that the effects of incomplete land reform were stronger in towns with no previous history of land reform.     

基于深度学习对茅台机场降水量预测的研究

强降水等恶劣天气对于民航的正常运行有着极大的危害，降水量的准确预测有助于民航等企业安全稳定运行。通过对机场跑道自动气象观测系统（AWOS）收集的降水时序数据进行预处理，为深度学习提供训练和测试的样本集，然后分别构建长短期记忆模型（LSTM）和时序卷积网络（TCN）模型，实现对未来1～3 h降水量的预测，并对两个模型的预测精度进行比较分析。结果表明,TCN模型的预测效果优于LSTM模型。其中，对未来1～3 h降水量的预测中，TCN模型的R2分别为0.96、0.91和0.86。     

Mechanical Refrigeration and the Integration of Perishable Commodity Markets

In this paper, we provide a history of the economic impact of mechanical refrigeration in the United States. We also examine spatial and temporal aspects of market integration. Specifically, we examine seasonal fluctuations in prices and analyze regional integration of markets for butter. We test the null hypothesis of no integration before and after the advent and adoption of refrigerated shipping and warehousing using 31 years of monthly data. We find strong evidence of spatially integrated markets after adoption. Our results indicate that the adoption of mechanical refrigeration brought about a significant dampening of seasonal fluctuations of butter prices and a tightening of spatial price linkages. We conclude that the adoption of mechanical refrigeration had a significant impact on both temporal and spatial butter price relationships.     

The Effect of Advertising on Collusion in the U.S. Brewing Industry: A Trigger Strategy Approach

In response to a dramatic reduction in the number of firms and enormous advertising expenditures in the U.S. brewing industry, we explore the effect of advertising cooperativeness on the likelihood of collusion. With advertising and price as strategic variables, we analyze an infinitely repeated symmetric game and model the degree of collusion using the trigger strategy. We find that constructive advertising can decrease the critical discount factor above which collusion is sustainable by trigger strategies and thus can support collusion, while combative advertising is likely to break the collusion. The results may help fill the gap between empirical evidence and theoretical predictions regarding advertising and collusion. We perform an empirical illustration using firm level data from 1950 to 2001 of Anheuser-Busch and Miller, the two largest domestic beer producers. The evidence confirms our conjecture that the U.S. brewing industry exhibits collusion and that the firm advertising, especially that of Miller, is of the constructive type.     

Core Labour Standards and FDI: Friends or Foes? The Case of Child Labour

We test the often-cited hypothesis that high levels of child labour attract foreign investors. Using panel data we show the overall effect which child labour has on foreign direct investment (FDI) to be a (small) negative one. We find strong evidence for the theoretical prediction that child labour deters FDI by slowing down economic development. Weaker evidence is provided for our theoretical prediction that child labour can discourage FDI via its impact on the availability of a skilled labour force in an economy. The data do not indicate that high levels of child labour drive down the factor share of labour, thereby increasing the attractiveness of an economy for foreign investors. JEL no. C33, F23, J82     

Specialization dynamics and natural resources abundance

This paper uses a large sample of countries for the last four decades to document how specialization dynamics differ depending on the abundance of natural resources. We show interesting stylized facts on two main issues. First, we do not find evidence that comparative advantage in resource-intensive products is necessarily more persistent than comparative advantage in manufactured goods. Second, we analyze the interaction between specialization in manufacturing and natural resources abundance. Though it is less likely that resource-rich countries have comparative advantage in manufactured goods, the abundance of natural resources does not inhibit significant changes in specialization for these countries.     

武汉市FDI与经济增长关系研究

基于FDI和经济发展的理论关系,选取1995年至2009年武汉市的历史数据,对武汉市FDI与经济增长之间的关系进行了分析,结果发现:①武汉市FDI是GDP变化的原因,但是武汉市FDI不受GDP变化的影响;②FDI对武汉市经济增长有着显著的正向推动作用;③两者之间存在显著的动态关联。针对上述分析结果本文提出了相应的政策建议。     

Further Evidence on the Effect of Clean Indoor Air Laws on Smoking: The Italian Case

The evidence about the effectiveness of anti-smoking legislation on smoking behavior is mixed. We provide new estimates for Italy using unexplored data drawn from the Household Budget Survey. We show that the smoking ban introduced in 2005 has a significant effect on smoking incidence. According to our baseline specification, the ban reduces household-based smoking prevalence by 1.3 percentage points. Results are robust to the various empirical strategies proposed in the literature, even accounting for seasonality.     

Impact of Funding Targeted Pre-school Interventions on School Readiness: Evidence from the Netherlands

We analyze the effectiveness of the early childhood programme (ECP) in the Netherlands. The programme is designed for 2.5–4 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. 37 municipalities received an additional subsidy to expand ECP programmes, which allows us to analyze the effects of the programme within a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. Most children first enroll in primary schools at age 4 in the Netherlands, but pupils begin to learn reading and mathematics in grade 3 at age 6. We use grade repetition constructed from school registry data from 2008 to 2015 in the first two grades as an indicator of school readiness. Our results show significantly lower grade repetition rates for targeted boys who are in regions that receive the subsidy. Grade repetition drops by 0.8–1.8 percentage points from a mean of 10.5% for the disadvantaged group targeted by the programme.     

Bank competition and monetary policy

There is an apparent theoretical discrepancy between the effects of monetary policy shocks on economies with differently competitive banking sectors. We employ cross-country data to investigate this hypothesis with two different approaches. First, using aggregate data we analyze the correlation between two indices: (i) a cumulative impulse response function providing an index of the effect of monetary policy shocks; and (ii) Panzar and Rosse's H-statistic as an index of the state of bank competition. Second, using disaggregated data we regress bank lending on the interaction of bank competition and monetary policy shocks. The first approach does not provide any evidence of a relationship between monetary policy shocks and bank competition. However, the second approach suggests that competition in the banking industry leads to smaller monetary policy effects on bank lending.     

Inflation Forecast Targeting: An Alternative Approach to Estimating the Inflation‐Output Variability Tradeoff

We suggest a new way of computing the inflation‐output variability tradeoff under inflation forecast targeting. Our approach is based on dynamic, stochastic simulations of the average inflation rate over a two‐year horizon using the moving average representation of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model. Using real‐time data over two samples, we estimate the inflation‐output variability tradeoff for the United States and show that it has shifted favorably over time. We analyze the policy interventions required to achieve target inflation in each sample and compare these interventions over time.     

A Psychological Reexamination of the Bertrand Paradox

The Bertrand paradox describes a situation in which two competing firms reach an outcome where both price at marginal cost. In laboratory experiments, this equilibrium is not generally observed. Existing empirical works on Bertrand competition have found evidence for boundedly rational models. We find that such models are useful in organizing behavior in early stages of the game, but less so in later stages. We show that a new model, coarse grid Nash equilibrium, based on the assumption that subjects discretize the strategy space, explains the data better.