Exponential convergence properties of linear estimators under exponential and uniform distribution

Summary Certain measures of asymptotic efficiency of test statistics are based on exponential convergence properties of the underlying error probabilities (Bahadur-, Hodges-Lehmann-efficiency). From a general large deviation theorem, that is specified to weighted sums of independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables, such exponential convergence properties are derived for test statistics which are linear functions of order statistics of i.i.d. random variables under exponential and uniform distribution. For that purpose some smoothness-conditions for the weights have to be established. In a series of examples it is shown that these conditions are fulfilled for certain robust linear estimators of location or scale parameters. With the help of some numerical results two of them, namely Winsorized and trimmed mean, are compared with regard to the asymptotic relative efficiency against each other.

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Zusammenfassung Bestimmte asymptotische Effizienzbegriffe für Tests basieren auf einem exponentiellen Konvergenzverhalten der zugrundeliegenden Fehlerwahrscheinlichkeiten (Bahadur-, Hodges-Lehmann-Effizienz). Mit Hilfe eines allgemeinen Satzes üver Wahrscheinlichkeiten großer Abweichungen, der spezialisiert wird auf gewichtete Summen unabhängiger, identisch verteilter (i.i.d.) Zufallsvariablen mit momenterzeugenden Funktionen, wird ein solches exponentielles Konvergenzverhalten nachgewiesen für Linearkombinationen von order statistics von i.i.d. Zufallsvariablen unter Exponential- und Rechteckverteilung. Dazu sind bestimmte Bedingungen an die Gewichte zu stellen. In einigen Beispielen wird gezeigt, daß solche Gewichtsbedingungen für eine Reihe von robusten Schätzern erfüllt sind. Zwei spezielle, nämlich das Winsorisierte und getrimmte Mittel, werden mit Hilfe einiger numerischer Ergebnisse hinsichtlich ihrer asymptotischen Effizienz miteinander verglichen.

     

Technical Inefficiency Effects Among Paddy Farmers in the Villages of the ‘Office du Niger’, Mali,West Africa

A stochastic frontier production function incorporating a model for technical inefficiency effects (Battese and Coelli, 1995) is applied to field data on paddy farmers from 29 villages in the Office du Niger in Mali. Four conventional factors (land, labor, fertilizer and machinery) are considered as inputs of production. The technical inefficiency effects in the stochastic frontier were related to firm-specific variables, institutional factors, social organisation, ecological considerations and health factors. Data were obtained from an economic survey conducted during two consecutive agricultural seasons (1989 and 1990) on 844 farms of the Office du Niger. The null hypothesis of the absence of technical inefficiency effects was rejected. A supportive institutional environment and a coherent organisation of land use were the best correlates of technically efficiency. The social environment was also found to contribute to technical efficiency of the paddy farmers: within the village, the greater the degree of ethnic cohesion, the greater the efficiency of the farmers. Health status of households had an effect in that healthy families tended to be more technically efficient than unhealthy ones. Farmers with more extensive sorghum cultivation were less efficient as paddy farmers. These results may help agricultural policy makers formulate strategies. Technical efficiency may be improved by intensifying agricultural training regarding one specific crop and, through the control of parasitic diseases which place a burden on family households.     

Trade liberalisation and endogenous growth: Some evidence for Turkey

This paper examines the impact of trade liberalisation on the long-run economic development as measured by the real GDP per capita in Turkey. Based on the endogenous growth theory, we employ bivariate and multivariate cointegration analyses to test the long-run relationship among the relevant variables. Results for Turkey suggest a stable, joint long-run relationship among real GDP per capita, an index of trade liberalisation, human and physical capital in accordance with the endogenous growth theory. Statistically significant error-correction terms provide further evidence that those variables are indeed cointegrated. This also implies causal effects.     

On the conceptualization of theoretical constructs

An attempt is made to bridge the gap between the theorists and modellists approaches to the conceptualization of theoretical constructs. The former approach assumes that every theoretical construct has a surplus meaning over and above its operationalization and measurement as a concept. The latter approach denies this: it only accepts theoretical constructs as functions of relations between observations, i.e. measured concepts.This gap can be bridged by explicating the definition of a theoretical construct before making attempts to operationalize and measure it. An explicated definition should cover all relevant aspects (or: facets) of a construct, systematically brought together in an ideal type model. On this basis, operationalization of the construct can be directly linked to model elements, so that any possibly remaining surplus value is made explicit. The distance between theoretical construct and the measured concept can then be made as small as seems feasible; in principle, the distance can be made zero. The manner in which conservative ideology is conceptualized in a longitudinal research project in the Dutch electorate is presented as an example of this strategy.     

More evidence that university administrators are utility maximizing bureaucrats

Coates and Humphreys (2000) found evidence that administrators affect enrollment supply and faculty demand using a panel of eleven public colleges and universities in Maryland, implying that institutions have enough market power to permit the preferences of administrators to influence these variables. We extend this framework to include political constraints on administrators behavior and add data from public higher education in Virginia. The results from these extensions are consistent with the earlier findings. However, we find that political considerations and differences in the governance of higher education in the two states have relatively little influence on enrollment supply and faculty demand decisions of university administrators.JEL Classification: I21, I28Paper prepared for the Research Conference Its Better to Rely on Well-designed Institutions Than on Well-behaved People held at UCLA, May 18/19, 2001. We thank Bob Lowry for comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Nicole Myers and Ryan Mutter for able research assistance.     

“Good Cause Beliefs” in an “At-Will World”? A Focused Investigation of Psychological Versus Legal Contracts

This study assesses the psychological contracts of a group of at-will employees and compares their relevant psychological contract beliefs with the terms of the controlling legal employment contract. In addition, we test specific hypotheses regarding the relationship between employers formal job security policy (employment at-will vs. good cause protection, and employee personal characteristics; equity sensitivity, organizational tenure) to 2 focal psychological contract beliefs (the employers obligation to have a good reason to discharge the employee, and the employees reciprocal obligation to have a good reason to leave his/her employer). These issues are investigated using survey data sampled from 15 diverse U.S. organizations, and independently collected information regarding organizations job security policies. The results provide evidence of a widely shared psychological contract belief that, despite explicit at-will policies, U.S. employers are highly obligated to have a good reason to discharge employees. Further, personal characteristics are more strongly related to the focal psychological contract beliefs than employer job security policies. The theoretical contribution of the study and its practical implications are discussed.     

A two-stage stratified Warner’s randomized response model using optimal allocation

This paper applies Kim and Wardes (2004) stratified Warners randomized response model to Mangat and Singhs (1990) two-stage randomized response model. The proposed stratified randomized response model has an optimal allocation and a large gain in precision. Hence, the estimator based on the proposed method is more efficient than Kim and Wardes (2004) and Mangat and Singhs (1990) estimators under the conditions presented in both the case of completely truthful reporting and that of not completely truthful reporting by the respondents.     

Christofides’ randomized response technique in complex sample surveys

Christofides (2003) has given an improved modification of Warners (1965) pioneering randomized response (RR) technique in estimating an unknown proportion of people bearing a sensitive characteristic in a given community. As both these RR devices are shown to yield unbiased estimators based only on simple random sampling (SRS) with replacement (WR) but in practice samples are mostly taken with unequal selection probabilities without replacement (WOR), here we present methods of estimation when Christofides RR data are available from unequal probability samples. Warners (1965) RR device was earlier shown by Chaudhuri (2001) to be applicable in complex surveys. For completeness we present estimators for the variance of our estimator and also describe what to do if some people opt to divulge truths.This research is partially supported by CSIR grant No. 21(0539)/02/EMR-II     

Moral suasion: An alternative tax policy strategy? Evidence from a controlled field experiment in Switzerland

With data gained from a controlled field experiment in Switzerland this paper analyses the effects of moral suasion on the timely paying and the timely filling out of the tax form 2001. Comparisons of different tax filing years and multiple regression estimations have been done using these two factors as dependent variables to check if there is a significant difference between the control group and the treatment group. In February 2002 the treatment group received a letter signed by the communes fiscal commissioner containing normative appeals. Results indicate that moral suasion has hardly any effect on taxpayers compliance behaviour. The strongest effect can be observed for the variable tax payments.Received: February 2003, Accepted: June 2004 JEL Classification: H260, H710BennoTorgler: Special thanks are due to the tax administration of Trimbach, especially to Adolf Müller and Gary Bitterli, who offered me the opportunity to collect the data and assisted the project. Furthermore I acknowledge the financial support of the WWZ-Forum and Swiss National Science Foundation and comments and suggestions from Doris Aebi, René L. Frey, the editor Kai A. Konrad and two anonymous referees.     

Forecasting economies in transition: The case of Romania

Structural change is endemic in the Eastern European economies and the newly emerging Commonwealth of Independent States yet conventional econometric modelling techniques proceed under the assumption that there is a structurally stable true economy to be discovered. This paper extends the analysis of Hall (1993) by exploring the consequences of endemic structural change for forecasting and building structural econometric models. We propose a model formulation which makes the econometric model itself able to adjust its parameters in the light of economic change using the Kalman Filter.The paper then illustrates this approach by building a small model of Romania and investigating its forecasting properties.This work was presented at a meeting of the MEET II network funded by the ACE project, Econometric Inference into the Macroeconomic dynamics of East European Economies.     

Modelling structural change using the Kalman Filter

Structural change is endemic in the Eastern European economies and the newly emerging Commonwealth of Independent States, yet conventional econometric modelling techniques proceed under the assumption that there is a structurally stable true economy to be discovered. This paper explores the consequences of endemic structural change for econometric modelling by considering the model reduction problem when the data generation process is itself undergoing structural change. The resultant econometric model, it is argued will generally exhibit time varying parameters where much of the structural change is reflected in the changing parameters. The use of Kalman Filters to estimate such changing parameters is then discussed and a range of specifications which allow the inclusion of different forms of identifying information is given. The paper then illustrates these ideas by modelling the determination of the black market exchange rate in Poland over the period from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.This paper was written as part of the A.C.E. project Methodology, Econometrics and Understanding the East European Economy in Transition.     

Kusterer or Manwaring and Wood on the High-Tech Labor Process? Analyzing the Nature of Skill,Deskilling and Managerial Control of Labor in a U.S. Medical Electronics Factory

Since Bravermans (1974) work revived interest and research in labor process theory, labor process theorists have developed differing conceptions of the nature of skill, deskilling and the managerial control of labor in the capitalist work organization. In this article, I examine two labor process theories, K. Kusterers (1978) theory of working knowledge and Manwaring and Woods (1985) theory of tacit skills, with regards to the nature of skill, deskilling and the managerial control of labor and test these two theories with respect to data obtained on unskilled and semiskilled production work at a high-tech medical electronics factory. I conclude that there is more support for Manwaring and Woods (1985) theory of tacit skills than for Kusterers (1978) theory of working knowledge for high-tech production work.     

Do Ukrainian Firms Benefit from FDI?

All countries are eager to attract as much foreign direct investments (FDI) as possible. At the same time FDI may have not only positive, but also negative economic effects for receiving countries. Positive effects are associated with technology transfer, efficient allocation of resources, and training of domestic workers. However, the entry of foreign firms could, e.g., lead to a decrease of labor productivity at domestic firms, which is a negative effect. The main purpose of this paper is to estimate direct and indirect effects of FDI. First, we test for direct influence of foreign direct investments on firms performance, where the latter is estimated alternatively as labor productivity and as exports. FDI notably increases both labor productivity and export volumes. Second, we look for spillover or indirect effects. There is statistical evidence that the levels of FDI in certain regional industries are associated with higher performance indicators of firms not receiving FDI in those same regional industries.JEL Classification: L1, L6, F2     

An alternative direct proof of Gibbard’s random dictatorship theorem

We present an alternative proof of the Gibbards random dictatorship theorem with ex post Pareto optimality. Gibbard(1977) showed that when the number of alternatives is finite and larger than two, and individual preferences are linear (strict), a strategy-proof decision scheme (a probabilistic analogue of a social choice function or a voting rule) is a convex combination of decision schemes which are, in his terms, either unilateral or duple. As a corollary of this theorem (credited to H. Sonnenschein) he showed that a decision scheme which is strategy-proof and satisfies ex post Pareto optimality is randomly dictatorial. We call this corollary the Gibbards random dictatorship theorem. We present a proof of this theorem which is direct and follows closely the original Gibbards approach. Focusing attention to the case with ex post Pareto optimality our proof is more simple and intuitive than the original Gibbards proof.Received: 15 October 2001, Accepted: 23 May 2003, JEL Classification: D71, D72Yasuhito Tanaka: The author is grateful to an anonymous referee and the Associate editor of this journal for very helpful comments and suggestions. And this research has been supported by a grant from the Zengin Foundation for Studies on Economics and Finance in Japan.     

Government Consumption and Industrial Productivity: Scale and Compositional Effects

Within a production function framework in which government spending produces public goods which enter firms production functions, empirical tests using time series data spanning eleven countries and thirty industries find both the scale and the composition of government consumption spending to affect the level and the rate of growth of total factor productivity at the industry level.Jel Classification: H50, D24     

The Emergence and Popularization of Strategic Alliances: Institutional and Entrepreneurial Views

Strategic alliances have become a popular strategy in many industries. However, the process through which alliances emerge and get popularized is not well understood. While both the institutional and entrepreneurial views are relevant, they represent competing explanations regarding the alliance phenomenon. This paper recognizes both views and sees alliance emergence as a function of both the firms entrepreneurial posture and its institutional environment. The popularization of alliances is discussed as a legitimization process that changes the institutional environment, which in turn encourages more alliance formation.     

County capital cities,county public finance and county economic geography

We are interested in the county governments role for the county seat economy. Our suggestion is this: Rather than discuss changes in county seat location at a given budget (representing a rare natural experiment), we should look at changes in county budget holding fixed county seat location (yielding a steady flow of observations). In the papers model changes in the county budget translate into changes in county seat employment. In the papers empirical test against a sample of German county seats we find it difficult to reject this.Received: February 2003, Accepted: Accepted May 2004JEL Classification: R53, H72, R23Kristof Dascher: I have benefitted from comments by three anonymous referees. I am also grateful for financial support from the CEPR research network on Foreign Direct Investment and the Multinational Organization, funded by the European Commission under contract number ERBFMRXCT980215.     

A more generalized planning model of Bangladesh: Some preliminary observations

Conclusion With a simple model which is more generalized than the one used in planning in Bangladesh, it has been demonstrated that government's overall budgetary programmes (revenue expenditure and credit policy) do not conform with sectoral output projections. This lack of conformity might have been responsible for the failure of planning in Bangladesh. For example, either macroeconomic policies (e.g., liberal credit policy) instead of raising output may have generated structural inflation or sectoral development and investment programmes may have fallen apart in the face of a rising price level. Since economic policies are directed at the macro level without due information about individual production sectors, certain government fiscal and monetary policy combinations may have increased demand for some output whose production could not be increased, at least in the short-run, because of structural bottlenecks. As a result, the Keynesian multiplier may have occurred only in nominal terms.On the other hand, planners may have set some investment target to free a given sector from structural bottlenecks, but fiscal and monetary policies were possibly not accommodating to generate required resources. Moreover, since the I-O model does not explain final demands on the basis of economic behaviour but rather treats them as exogenous, it short-circuits the income propagation mechanism. This possibly led to inconsistency between the forecasts of the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Finance regarding changes in gross domestic product (GDP) due to changes in exogenous variables.Therefore, for the successful harmonization of stabilization policies and development strategies, the analytical framework of both the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission need to be bridged. For this a more general social accounting framework, the Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is needed. The SAM provides a complete and consistent picture of the circular flow (both real and monetary) in an economy. Therefore, the Planning Commission and the Bureau of Statistics should attempt to integrate information on financial flows and institutional income distribution with the information on real flows (I-O table) in the economy. This will provide a framework for a more generalized planning model within which impacts of monetary and fiscal policies can be traced to the individual sectors, so that there could be fruitful dialogue between the two Departments of the government.This paper is based on chapters 3 & 4 of the author's Ph.D. thesis, submitted to the University of Manitoba, 1983.This paper is based on chapters 3 & 4 of the author's Ph.D. thesis, submitted to the University of Manitoba, 1983.The author wishes to express his Sincere gratitude to Professor L.R.Klein for encouraging him to take up this project and for useful criticisms later as an external examiner. Thanks are also due to the advisory Committee, Professors C. Nicolaou, R. Lobdell, and P.S. Dhruvarajan. However, for any deficiency and error that remain, the author alone is responsible.     

Investment mobilization and capacity completion in the Chinese and Soviet economies

This paper examines the relationship between the mobilization of resources into capital projects and the completion of new productive capacity in two shortage economies—China and the USSR. Causes of delayed commissioning of new capacity, and the role of unfinished construction in the investment cycle, are analysed. Annual data over a long period are presented for both economies—for the USSR 1928–37 and 1950–83, and for China 1950–82. Changes over time in the relationship between investment mobilization and capacity completion are considered, along with differences and similarities between the records of the two economies under investigation.Department of Economics, University of Warwick. I am grateful for helpful advice and comments received from Julian Cooper and Philip Hanson of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham; from Bob Lewis, Department of Economic History, University of Exeter; from Raja Junankar of the Institute of Employment Research, David Rees of the Department of Economics and colleagues of the Development Economics Research Centre seminar, University of Warwick; and from an anonymous referee.     

Marginal distributions of sequential and generalized order statistics

Expressions for marginal distribution functions of sequential order statistics and generalized order statistics are presented without any restrictions imposed on the model parameters. The results are related to the relevation transform, to the distribution of the product of Beta distributed random variables, and to Meijers G-functions. Some selected applications in the areas of moments, conditional distributions, recurrence relations, and reliability properties are shown. Key words:Order statistics; Generalized order statistics; Sequential order statistics; Record values; Distribution theory; Meijers G-function; Recurrence relations; Reliability properties.