Much Ado About Nothing: the Mixed Models Controversy Revisited

We consider a well-known controversy that stems from the use of two mixed models for the analysis of balanced experimental data with a fixed and a random factor. It essentially originates in the different statistics developed from such models for testing that the variance parameter associated to the random factor is null. The corresponding hypotheses are interpreted as that of null random factor main effects in the presence of interaction. The controversy is further complicated by different opinions regarding the appropriateness of such hypothesis. Assuming that this is a sensible option, we show that the standard test statistics obtained under both models are really directed at different hypotheses and conclude that the problem lies in the definition of the main effects and interactions. We use expected values as in the fixed effects case to resolve the controversy showing that under the most commonly used model, the test usually associated to the inexistence of the random factor main effects addresses a different hypothesis. We discuss the choice of models, and some further problems that occur in the presence of unbalanced data.     

Ordinal notions of submodularity

We consider several ordinal formulations of submodularity, defined for arbitrary binary relations on lattices. Two of these formulations are essentially due to Kreps [Kreps, D.M., 1979. A representation theorem for “Preference for Flexibility”. Econometrica 47 (3), 565–578] and one is a weakening of a notion due to Milgrom and Shannon [Milgrom, P., Shannon, C., 1994. Monotone comparative statics. Econometrica 62 (1), 157–180]. We show that any reflexive binary relation satisfying either of Kreps’s definitions also satisfies Milgrom and Shannon’s definition, and that any transitive and monotonic binary relation satisfying the Milgrom and Shannon’s condition satisfies both of Kreps’s conditions.     

The Pelagian Controversy: An Economic Analysis

A bstract .   In recent years economic theory has been used to analyze the introduction of new religious doctrines as innovations that further the objectives of religious organizations and their leaders. The present study analyzes the decision of church authorities in the early fifth century to reject the doctrine advanced by Pelagius in favor of the position taken by Augustine. Accounts of the controversy reveal two self-interested motives for the church hierarchy to reject the Pelagian doctrine: (1) the Pelagian view would have undermined the authority of the church hierarchy; and (2) by making greater demands for moral conduct, it would have raised the "cost" of being a Christian and thereby discouraged growth in church membership, particularly among the Roman upper class.     

序数效用的集合与分析

本文用基本的集合理论和代数理论对序数效用作了初步分析,这也是运用此类数学理论或形式对经济现象进行描述的尝试,同时为集合理论和代数理论提供了具有经济意义的例子。     

The distribution of personal income: Revisited

In a recent paper, Majumder and Chakravarty (1990) propose a four-parameter model which they find provides a better fit to some income data than the lognormal, gamma, Singh-Maddala, Dagum, and generalized beta of the second kind (GB2) distributions. This note (1) demonstrates that the model proposed by Majumder and Chakravarty is a reparameterization of the GB2 and (2) reconciles the corresponding contradictory empirical findings reported by Majumder and Chakravarty.     

The Brexit Controversy; what light does evidence shed?

• ? There has been widespread misinformation in and outside Parliament about the economic case for Brexit. Outside Parliament, the rival groups – those with a negative assessment of Brexit and those with a positive one – have set out their arguments but these have huge differences in the factual and intellectual support they each bring to the debate. The group predicting a negative effect have published a wide set of empirical appraisals from academic and related research teams of the case for leaving and that against it. This, largely rigorous statistical analysis, finds strong and clear evidence of the large costs to leaving. The camp predicting a positive result for Brexit, in contrast, relies on one academic source for its case; the Cardiff University Macroeconomic Institute led by Patrick Minford. This has reported its predictions of the effects of Brexit which in contrast to the other camp, show large positive effects to growth and other key parts of the UK economy.
• ? We assess the empirical quality of these two cases and conclude that the economic modelling of the Cardiff group is insufficient for them to give an adequate empirical estimate of the costs and benefits of Brexit; the Liverpool model it uses has a sparse overseas sector and does not differentiate between EU and non‐EU trade for example, so is unsuited to analyse the effects of changes in these. Our verdict is that, based on the evidence, Brexit in almost any form would be damaging to the UK. ¹ 1 The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and may or may not be those of Oxford Economics
  

     

再谈卓越经营模式

卓越经营模式,在本质上是把组织卓越绩效的因素和随之产生的结果之间联系起来,这些模式也是许多国家、地区乃至国际质量奖评奖的基础     

Ordinal Methodology in the Analysis of Likert Scales

Likert scales are widely used in survey studies for attitude measuring. In particular, the questionnaires propagated by the SERVQUAL approach are based on Likert scales. Though the problem of attitude suggests an ordinal interpretation of Likert scales, attitude survey data are often evaluated with techniques designed for cardinal measurements. The present paper discusses the interpretation of scales for attitude measuring and gives a survey of data analysis techniques under the proper ordinal understanding.     

Debt Service Capacity Revisited

Abstract

Debt Service Capacity (DSC) is revisited within a new framework, i.e., Neural Networks (NN), an established method in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). A select group of traditional models that have been used to predict DSC is also reviewed and the logit approach is chosen for comparison with NN.

Ten measures (indices) are constructed as determinants of DSC. To keep the comparison simple, empirical applications of the two models are controlled by employing the same data sample and the same holdout and estimation groups in both models. A few drawbacks of the traditional approaches, especially the presence of multicollinearity, are pointed out. It is shown that when multicollinearity is present, the exponential of the coefficients cannot be explained as the odds ratio.

A number of tests and sensitivity analyses are performed to exhibit the attributes and the performance of the two models.     

Tinbergen's Hierarchy Hypothesis Revisited

In this study, Tinbergen's hierarchy hypothesis is extended to include Dokmeci's optimization of the hierarchical production model. The optimal location of hierarchically coordinated plants is determined on a non-homogenous plane by taking into consideration price-elastic demand, production cost and transportation cost. The objective is to determine the maximum-profit location while satisfying the income constraint of the region. A stepwise heuristic approach is used for the solution. In the region, the markets are divided into optimum subsets according to a chosen number of plants in each level. Market demand is calculated with respect to a selected uniform price. The optimum location of plants is calculated iteratively by the use of Dökmeci's model in each level of the hierarchy. Then, the same procedure is repeated for different numbers of plants in each level of the hierarchy by taking into consideration the interdependence among the levels. The alternative which produces the maximum profits within the limits of regional income is determined as the best system.     

International Banking Facilities Revisited

The creation of International Banking Facilities (IBFs) in 1981 was an attempt by U.S. banking regulators to allow U.S.-based banks and their offshore customers to have access to the Euromarket in a U.S. political and legal jurisdiction, operating in a U.S. time zone. The expected benefits were as follows: 1. the cost of capital for U.S.-based banks (both U.S. and foreign-owned) and their offshore customers, particularly multinational firms, would be reduced due to lower political risk, no reserve requirements, and no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation requirements; 2. Banks could potentially reduce their operating costs to die extent that IBFs replaced offshore shell branches; 3. Additional bank employment would be created in the U.S.; 4. although IBFs would not be subject to U.S. Federal taxes, a geographical shift of bank assets to the U.S. might create a higher Federal tax revenue due to a reduction in foreign tax credit claimed by the banks. In retrospect the performance of IBFs has shown mixed results. With respect to cost of capital, the IBFs must have been cost effective because there has been an impressive growth in IBF assets and loans, coincident with a stagnation in the offshore bank shell branches. However, die largest benefit of this growdi has accrued to foreign-owned IBFs. With respect to lower operating costs, the IBFs have not caused the offshore shell branches to close since they are needed to do business with U.S. residents. With respect to employment, bank employment in the U.S. has gone up marginally, although not nearly as much as originally predicted. The impact of IBFs on Federal tax revenues was not investigated in this study. Public policy impacts of IBF operations have also been less than expected in that IBFs have not eliminated the need for offshore shell-branches in the Caribbean, although they have significantly stifled growth in these financial centers. The entrance of the Japanese Offshore Market in December 1986 and the potential that other countries may enter the competition could well have long term negative impacts on the growth potential of U.S. IBFs.     

The Continuing Controversy over Right-to-Work Laws in the Early Twenty-First Century

This article provides a brief introduction to the ongoing controversy concerning right-to-work (RTW) legislation in the United States. The paper proceeds with the outlining of the major ideological arguments in favor of and in opposition to RTW laws before presenting the taste, free rider and bargaining power hypotheses which has motivated research concerning the economic effects of RTW laws. After reporting the findings of some of the basic empirical research designed to test these hypotheses as well as other recent studies, the article concludes that RTW laws have, at a minimum, moderately reduced the scope of unionization as well as the number of union members over the long-run. This indicates that the presence or absence of RTW legislation is not merely a symbolic fight as some have maintained but is something that has real consequences for the trade union movement’s future in the United States in the early 21^st century.     

On the Application of Conditional Independence to Ordinal Data

A special log linear parameterization is described for contingency tables which exploits prior knowledge that an ordinal scale of the variables is involved. It is helpful, in particular, in guiding the possible merging of adjacent levels of variables and may simplify interpretation if higher-order interactions are present. Several sets of data are discussed to illustrate the types of interpretation that can be achieved. The simple structure of the maximum likelihood estimates is derived by use of Lagrange multipliers.     

Technology Flows Matrix Estimation Revisited

This paper revisits the methodological problems of estimating matrices showing how technological advances--measured by industry research and development outlays--flow from industries of origin to using industries. An early effort relied upon the analysis of 15 112 US patents. Several alternative methods are explored to address methodological questions concerning the choice of carrier matrices, the handling of diagonal elements, and the treatment of capital goods flows. Technology flow matrices estimated using diverse combinations of assumptions are tested for goodness-of-fit relative to the original patent-based matrix and for their ability to "predict' productivity growth in Solowian regression equations. Although some anomalies emerge, the best results are obtained using combined first-order transactions and capital flows matrices with diagonal elements adjusted to reflect the ratio of internal process to all R&D spending. However, flow data compiled using the Leontief inverse matrix add explanatory power in productivity growth regressions.     

On Certain Indices for Ordinal Data with Unequally Weighted Classes

In this paper, some new indices for ordinal data are introduced. These indices have been developed so as to measure the degree of concentration on the “small” or the “large” values of a variable whose level of measurement is ordinal. Their advantage in relation to other approaches is that they ascribe unequal weights to each class of values. Although, they constitute a useful tool in various fields of applications, the focus here is on their use in sample surveys and specifically in situations where one is interested in taking into account the “distance” of the responses from the “neutral” category in a given question. The properties of these indices are examined and methods for constructing confidence intervals for their actual values are discussed. The performance of these methods is evaluated through an extensive simulation study.     

Discrimination by Black Males Revisited:

ABSTRACT In an earlier article on faculty salary discrimination at a Southern, historically black, public university (SHBU), the authors presented evidence of salary discrimination by black males against other race-sex groups (Riggs and Dwyer 1995). The authors now contrast SHBU's salary model with the model of Riggs and Dwyer and apply the latter to new data to determine whether SHBU eliminated race and sex discrimination in faculty salaries. After equity adjustments, the evidence suggests that SHBU has eliminated the salary discrimination found by Riggs and Dwyer in their earlier study.     

Migration and the Tiebout-Tullock Hypothesis Revisited

This study investigates, using state-level data for the period 2000–2005, the Tiebout hypothesis (as extended by Tullock) of voting with one's feet. This analysis differs from previous related studies not only in its adoption of more current migration and other data but also in other ways. First, unlike most earlier related studies, it includes a separate measure of the overall cost of living; second, it examines per pupil (rather than per capita) outlays on public primary and secondary education; and third, in addition to property taxes, it also focuses on per capita state income tax burdens. Inclusion of the last of these variables in the analysis is based on studies that have found the existence of a state income tax to have influenced migration patterns and other studies that have found higher state income tax levels to have resulted in reduced per capita income growth over time. Moreover, including both property tax burdens and income tax burdens broadens the scope of the hypothesis. Strong empirical support for the Tiebout-Tullock hypothesis (as interpreted here) is obtained for the study period.