Impact of oil booms and busts on human capital investment in the USA

This paper uses Census IPUMS data from 1970 to 2000 and ACS data from 2010 to estimate the impact of oil booms and busts on wages and human capital formation in the USA. The paper finds that the oil boom between 1970 and 1980 was associated with a slower growth in the relative demand for skills in the oil and gas sector and regions where the sector had a large presence. The oil boom led to a sharp rise in real wages and a modest decline in college wage premium in oil-rich regions in the USA. Using a synthetic cohort approach, the paper finds that relative to cohorts who went to high school in the pre-oil boom period, the cohort reaching high school age during the oil boom was about 1–2% points less likely to have a college degree by 2000 and 2010.     

Public investment and private capital formation in a vector error-correction model of growth

Most of the literature dealing with the impact of public investment on private capital formation and economic growth focuses either on cross-section or static analysis. However, investigation of the long-run dynamic interactions between private and public investment and growth is much more insightful for public policy aiming at the determination of the appropriate size of its public sector. This paper extends the model of Barth and Cordes (1980) and uses multivariate cointegration techniques to develop a vector error-correction model useful for investigating the long-run effects of public investment on private capital formation and economic growth. We apply our methodology to a developing country implementing the IMF debt-stabilization programmes and show how, in this country, public investment is having a negative short-run impact on private investment and a negative long-run impact on both private investment and economic growth.     

Privatization and capital formation in developing countries: an empirical analysis

The spur for privatization and its impact on economic performance have been analysed from many perspectives, including microeconomics, macroeconomics, and institutional economics. Previous research has focused on efficiency reasons for privatization at the level of the firm, and the relative performance of state‐owned enterprises and privately owned firms. This article investigates the macroeconomic facet of privatization with particular attention paid to the relation between privatization and capital formation in developing countries. Our study uses recent World Bank data on privatization for 105 countries over the time period 1988–2003. We explore the impact of privatization on capital formation by conducting two‐stage least squares and ordinary least squares estimations within three time frames. Our findings indicate that the effect of privatization on capital formation varies across regions and time frames. In general, privatization is neutral with regard to investment.     

教化投资:人力资本投资的新形式

本文针对现有的人力资本理论将人力资本投资形式局限于教育、培训、医疗、保健和迁移,而对其他投资形式关注不足的现实,认为适应于现代经济生活相关的思想观念、价值取向和道德规范,需要相关投入才会形成,这些投入也是人力资本投资不可或缺的形式,笔者将其概括为教化投资。经济转型过程凸显了教化投资的重要性。教化投资增强了人力资本的资源配置能力,在扩大个体人力资本存量的同时,还提升了社会经济价值,增加了社会资本。     

Government investment in natural capital

This paper presents a new approach to the measurement of natural capital. A distinguishing feature of this approach is the use of investment criteria that are consistent with the main features of physical capital, thus maintaining consistency in the measurement of different types of capital. This new approach was applied to the expenditures of the federal government in Canada as recorded in the Public Accounts for fiscal year 2004-05. My results indicate that, in 2004-05, total investment in natural capital by the federal government amounted to 2.6% of net budgetary expenditures. Spending on physical capital, the only component that is currently included as investment in the National Accounts, represented only 5% of total investment in natural capital.     

Irreversible investment and Knightian uncertainty

When firms make a decision about irreversible investment, they may not have complete confidence about their perceived probability measure describing future uncertainty. They may think other probability measures perturbed from the original one are also possible. Such uncertainty, characterized by not a single probability measure but a set of probability measures, is called “Knightian uncertainty.” The effect of Knightian uncertainty on the value of irreversible investment opportunity is shown to be drastically different from that of traditional uncertainty in the form of risk. Specifically, an increase in Knightian uncertainty decreases the value of investment opportunity while an increase in risk increases it.     

Foreign direct investment and institutional reform: evidence and an application to Portugal

We examine the role of geographic, economic, and institutional factors in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Europe, using a cross-section of inward bilateral investments. We estimate and assess the expected benefits, the required reform efforts, and the efficiency of reform options corresponding to a convergence of Portuguese institutions to EU standards. We conclude that improving home institutions is likely to have a quantitatively very significant role in attracting FDI. Geographical and market size factors also play a role. Reforms promoting the independence of financial institutions and a leaner bureaucracy, lowering political risk and corruption, and improving the investment code may significantly affect the amount of bilateral inward FDI that is targeted to Portugal.     

Risk-aversely efficient random variables: Characterization and an application to growth under uncertainty

Consider a problem of choice from a set R of multivariate random variables. Let us examine only efficient elements of R which are optimal choices of risk averse decision-makers (whose aim is to maximize expected utility over R). We obtain a price characteristic of all risk-aversely efficient random variables in R. This result has been applied to multi-sector optimal growth model to obtain a characterization by competitive prices of all risk-aversely efficient stationary consumption programs.     

Controlling endogenous fluctuations of human capital investment in an OLG economy

A bifurcation occurs when there is a sudden qualitative or topological change in the behavior of the original system by varying one or more parameters (the bifurcation parameters) of the original system. Bifurcation can cause unacceptable new conditions or instability in the economy system. Its control is done by designing a controller input, thereby achieving desirable dynamical behavior. This paper deals with the control of a bifurcation caused by a rise in information costs in a human capital investment model. By employing the delayed feedback control (DFC) method, unstable fluctuations stemming from the system can be controlled without changing its original properties. In addition, we show the effectiveness and feasibility of the developed methods in the system with explicit functions.     

Political uncertainty and labour investment efficiency

ABSTRACT

We examine the impact of political uncertainty on the labour investment efficiency (LIE) of a firm. Using a sample of Chinese firms, we test the market discipline and managerial entrenchment hypotheses. Our findings suggest that political uncertainty adversely affects LIE. The results are consistent with the managerial entrenchment hypothesis. That is, firms hire more labour in a period of increased information asymmetry due to the political uncertainty, which deteriorates LIE. Our findings are robust to a battery of alternative measures of LIE and estimation methods. We conduct several additional analyses and document that the adverse impact of political uncertainty is stronger when the newly appointed government official is older, the firm is state-owned, the firm belongs to a politically sensitive industry or the firm operates in locations with stringent labour protection. By contrast, when the firm locates in a region with weak Chinese government intervention or after President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, the adverse impact of political uncertainty on LIE is less pronounced. Last, we document that after hiring more labour, firms receive tangible and intangible benefits in terms of receiving more loans, collect more government subsidies, and able to re-establish some political connection but at the cost of lower performance.     

Irreversible investment with uncertainty and strategic behavior

The paper provides a model of technology adoption in the case where adopting alone is more expensive than adopting when others have already done so (network effect). In addition, if each agent gains at the expense of his rivals, he may also have an incentive for ‘preemptive adoption’. We deal with these two issues in a dynamic programing framework, where adoption is seen as a strategic switching time decision problem for agents facing an ongoing stochastic operating benefit plus sunken investment costs. The model defines the option value of investing for a continuous time stochastic game. In the case of network benefits alone, agents follow a stationary bandwagon strategy, representing the effect caused by a war of attrition. Yet, as network benefits reduce adoption costs after an agent has switched, rivals may follow suit. In the opposite case, where going first gives the innovator a higher payoff the bandwagon rule is turned over and the option value of investing first may be lower than that of going second. This gives rise to sequential adoption.     

Social capital and snake oil

This paper argues that the social capital that comes from group identification has a mixture of effects on welfare. In this sense, this form of social capital is neither snake oil nor elixir but something in between. Strong group distinction and identification reduce the adverse impact that relative comparisons can have on happiness, and they probably help with existential anxieties. However, strong groups in this sense can also plausibly heighten inter-group animosity to the detriment of all. Whether they do, however, is likely to depend on the character of the beliefs that give identity to each group. The paper further argues that an ‘open’ set of beliefs in the Austrian or Hayekian sense are the ones least likely to spawn such animosity. In this way, the paper points public policy away from the encouragement to group formation to the character of the groups that are formed.      

Competition schemes and investment in network infrastructure under uncertainty

This paper compares two specific types of competition schemes—service-based and facility-based competition—by focusing on a firm’s incentive to invest in network infrastructure. We show that when monopoly rent is large, facility-based competition means that the initial introduction of infrastructure is made earlier than under service-based competition. However, when monopoly rent and the degree of uncertainty are both small, service-based competition brings about the earlier initial introduction of infrastructure than facility-based competition. The paper includes discussion of the policy implications of these findings.      

The economic policy uncertainty and firm investment in Australia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the Australian firm investment activity. We find a significant positive relationship between the EPU and the firm investment over 2002 to 2017 period. Our main results remain unchanged after several endogeneity tests. Further analysis reveals that this relationship becomes pronounced for firms if their headquarters located in small states, firms with more tangible assets, higher operating cash flows and cash holdings, higher profits and leverage, but firms with fewer dividend payouts. Our paper sheds lights on the unique attribute of the impact of the EPU on the Australian firm investment activity and offers important policy and managerial implications.     

Human–capital investment and the wage gap

Summary. According to empirical studies, the wage differential by skills evolved non–monotonically in the past decades although the relative supply of skilled labor steadily increased. The present paper provides a theoretical explanation for this finding. In our setting, technological change intertemporally alters the human–capital investment incentives of heterogeneous individuals. As a consequence of changing incentives, the time path of the relative wage is U–shaped while there is a rise in the share of skilled workers. Received: November 28, 2000; revised version: January 30, 2001     

Twice constrained investment under uncertainty: A mixed time model

This paper explores the investment decision of a firm facing both an irreversibility constraint and a financial constraint on investment. I show that, for all but the fastest growing firms, the planned investment delaying impact of an irreversibility constraint dominates the planned investment accelerating impact of a financing constraint. This result is especially likely to hold in a reality where firms have a variety of strategies not modeled here, from holding cash reserves to taking on debt, that can mitigate the financing constraint.     

Model uncertainty and asset return predictability: an application of Bayesian model averaging

We investigate model uncertainty associated with predictive regressions employed in asset return forecasting research. We use simple combination and Bayesian model averaging (BMA) techniques to compare the performance of these forecasting approaches in short-vs. long-run horizons of S&P500 monthly excess returns. Simple averaging involves an equally-weighted averaging of the forecasts from alternative combinations of factors used in the predictive regressions, whereas BMA involves computing the predictive probability that each model is the true model and uses these predictive probabilities as weights in combing the forecasts from different models. From a given set of multiple factors, we evaluate all possible pricing models to the extent, which they describe the data as dictated by the posterior model probabilities. We find that, while simple averaging compares quite favorably to forecasts derived from a random walk model with drift (using a 10-year out-of-sample iterative period), BMA outperforms simple averaging in longer compared to shorter forecast horizons. Moreover, we find further evidence of the latter when the predictive Bayesian model includes shorter, rather than longer lags of the predictive factors. An interesting outcome of this study tends to illustrate the power of BMA in suppressing model uncertainty through model as well as parameter shrinkage, especially when applied to longer predictive horizons.     

Analysing wage differentials when workers maximize the return to human capital investment

The analysis of the determinants of differences in wages across workers has traditionally relied on the estimation of average earnings functions. In this article, we propose a new theoretical model where it is the workers who decide the amount they wish to invest in human capital, taking into account the costs of acquiring those skills, for the purpose of maximizing earnings. In this model, both human capital and marginal productivity are likely to be influenced by the individual’s (unobserved) characteristics such as ability or motivation, potentially giving rise to endogeneity problems. In this context, the empirical implementation of our theoretical model allows us, under certain assumptions, to obtain consistent estimates even under the assumption of endogeneity. We present an empirical application to the education sector using data from the Spanish Structure of Earnings Survey 2010. Our results show that females and workers in the private education sector face more difficulties in achieving their maximum potential wage.