Probabilistic sophistication,second order stochastic dominance and uncertainty aversion

We study the interplay of probabilistic sophistication, second order stochastic dominance and uncertainty aversion, three fundamental notions in choice under uncertainty. In particular, our main result, Theorem 2, characterizes uncertainty averse preferences that are probabilistically sophisticated, as well as uncertainty averse preferences that satisfy second order stochastic dominance. As a byproduct, Proposition 2 highlights a fundamental tension between probabilistic sophistication/second order stochastic dominance and uncertainty aversion in the presence of nontrivial unambiguous events.     

Income risk, macroeconomic and demographic change, and economic inequality in Japan

Using an OLG model with heterogeneous households, we investigate the relationship among income risk, macroeconomic and demographic changes, and economic inequality between 1980 and 2000 in Japan. By decomposing the primary factors in earnings and consumption inequality into macroeconomic variables and the demographic variable, we find that our model replicates the evolution of economic inequality in Japan. By performing counterfactual simulations, we demonstrate that two factors—changes in time-varying macroeconomic factors and the unexpected decline in the total factor productivity growth rate—played important roles in the increase in earnings and consumption inequality in the 1990s.     

IFRS,financial development and income inequality: An empirical study using mediation analysis

Income inequality continues to be an issue of concern. Early work on economic development suggested that, as a country’s economy grows, incomes would rise and reduce any income disparities. However, there is growing evidence that as countries develop, income inequality actually worsens. Some studies argue that this is the result of financial development and the growth of the financial sector. Although there is a good deal of empirical research on the relationship between financial development and income inequality, there is no prior work that examines how accounting standards, in particular International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), might influence this relationship. This study examines the relationship of IFRS and financial development with income inequality using mediation analysis over the period from 1998 to 2018. The results indicate that the impact of IFRS on income inequality is mediated by financial development. Moreover, there is a direct relationship between IFRS and inequality.     

Moment inequalities for order statistics with applications to characterizations of distributions

General inequalities of Hölder type between moments of order statistics and moments of record values respectively are derived. Special choices of the involved sample sizes and ranks and discussions of when equality is attained in these inequalities yield several characterizations of well known distributions, such as the uniform, polynomial, Pareto, reflected Pareto, exponential, Weibull distribution and some others.     

Testing log-linear models with inequality constraints: a comparison of asymptotic, bootstrap, and posterior predictive p-values

An important aspect of applied research is the assessment of the goodness-of-fit of an estimated statistical model. In the analysis of contingency tables, this usually involves determining the discrepancy between observed and estimated frequencies using the likelihood-ratio statistic. In models with inequality constraints, however, the asymptotic distribution of this statistic depends on the unknown model parameters and, as a result, there no longer exists an unique p -value. Bootstrap p -values obtained by replacing the unknown parameters by their maximum likelihood estimates may also be inaccurate, especially if many of the imposed inequality constraints are violated in the available sample. We describe the various problems associated with the use of asymptotic and bootstrap p -values and propose the use of Bayesian posterior predictive checks as a better alternative for assessing the fit of log-linear models with inequality constraints.