The determinants of tendering periods for PPP procurement in the UK: an empirical analysis

The procurement of infrastructure projects via public–private partnerships (PPPs) is rising globally. PPPs are, however, often characterized by lengthy tendering periods, defined as the difference between contract notice and financial close. Tendering periods are important because they account for a significant proportion of overall project delivery time. Slow tendering deters bidders and thus reduces competition for contracts. We source data on 670 PPP projects in the United Kingdom and use a duration analysis model to empirically examine factors that impact tendering period duration. Our results reveal significant sectoral variation with projects in the health and housing sectors taking significantly longer to reach financial close. We also show that, after controlling for other factors, projects with higher capital values and projects that overlap with the timing of general elections are associated with significantly longer tendering periods. We further examine the impact of the competitive dialogue procurement method and find evidence that tendering periods have increased since 2006; the year competitive dialogue was introduced. We do, however, observe a significant reduction in the time between appointment of preferred bidder and financial close post-2006. This suggests that competitive dialogue is effective in reducing the scope for negotiations by preferred bidders holding quasi-monopoly advantages.     

Revisiting the Porter hypothesis: an empirical analysis of Green innovation for the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Almost all empirical research that has attempted to assess the validity of the Porter hypothesis (PH) has started from reduced-form models, for example, single-equation models for estimating the contribution of environmental regulation to productivity. This paper follows a structural approach that allows testing what is known in the literature as the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ version of the PH. Our ‘Green Innovation’ model includes three types of eco-investments to explain differences in the incidence of two types of eco-innovation, which are allowed to affect labor productivity. We allow for complementarity between the two types of eco-innovations. Using a comprehensive panel of Dutch manufacturing firm-level data we estimate the relative importance of environmental regulations on eco-investment and eco-innovations. The results of our analysis show a strong corroboration of the weak and a nuanced corroboration of the strong version of the PH.     

The PPP hypothesis and structural breaks: the case of Mexico

We test the purchasing power parity hypothesis for the Mexican peso/US dollar real exchange rate using monthly data for 1969–2010. Results suggest that the real exchange rate reverts to a changing mean. These mean shifts can be explained by liberalization policies implemented during the 1980s and 1990s that reduced trade barriers in the Mexican economy. Such policies modified the tradable/non-tradable goods composition of the price index producing mean shifts in the real exchange rate associated with PPP.     

Quantile nonlinear unit root test with covariates and an application to the PPP hypothesis

In this article, we employ the methods initiated by Hansen (1995) to develop new quantile nonlinear unit root tests with covariates. The limiting distributions of our proposed tests are derived, which are dependent on nuisance parameter reflecting the correlation between the equation error and the covariates. To deal with this inferential difficulty, two alternative procedures based on either consistent estimate of the nuisance parameter or bootstrap implementation of the test are proposed. Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed tests perform very well in finite samples and large power gains can be achieved by including correlated covariates in the testing equation. The proposed tests are applied to the PPP hypothesis. The empirical results indicate that the real exchange rates are not constant unit root processes.     

Graphical causal models and VARs: an empirical assessment of the real business cycles hypothesis

This paper assesses the empirical plausibility of the real business cycle view that shocks to real variables are the dominant sources of economic fluctuations and that monetary policy shocks play an insignificant role in determining the behavior of real variables. I reconsider the vector autoregressive model of King et al. (Am Econ Rev 81:819–840, 1991), but propose an alternative identification method, based on graphical causal models. This method selects the contemporaneous causal structure using the information incorporated in the partial correlations among the residuals. The residuals orthogonalization which follows and the study of the impulse response functions confirm the results of King et al. (Am Econ Rev 81:819–840, 1991): permanent productivity shocks are not the dominant sources of aggregate fluctuations in US economy. I would like to thank Peter Spirtes, Marco Lippi, and Clark Glymour for helpful comments on early versions of the paper. I am also grateful to Valentina Corradi for providing me with an updated version of the King et al. (1991) data set. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Charitable giving among females and males: an empirical test of the competitive altruism hypothesis

We conduct a real-effort task experiment where subjects’ performance translates into a donation to a charity. In a within-subjects design we vary the visibility of the donation (no/private/public feedback). Confirming previous studies, we find that subjects’ performance increases, that is, they donate more to charity, when their relative performance is made public. In line with the competitive altruism hypothesis, a biology-based explanation for status-seeking behavior, especially male subjects increase performance in the public setting.     

Reexamining the PPP hypothesis: A nonlinear asymmetric heterogeneous panel unit root test

In this study, we re-examine the PPP hypothesis in the light of the new developments in the unit root testing literature. The recent theoretical findings have pointed out that the real exchange rate series exhibit asymmetric nonlinear behavior. A unit root test applied to analyze the PPP hypothesis therefore, should also take into account this asymmetry inherent in the real exchange rate. Different unit root tests that consider the presence of these data features have been developed in the time series literature. However, a true attempt to test the PPP hypothesis should take a panel data approach. To this end, we propose a nonlinear heterogeneous panel unit root test where the alternative hypothesis allows for symmetric or asymmetric exponential smooth transition autoregressive nonlinearity and provide its finite sample properties. We apply our test to the real exchange rates of the 15 European Union countries against the US dollar. While the results of the linear and symmetric nonlinear heterogeneous panel unit root tests are against the PPP hypothesis, the asymmetric nonlinear heterogeneous panel test that we propose gives support for the PPP hypothesis as expected. Therefore, the conclusions drawn from the linear panel unit root tests or the nonlinear panel unit root tests that do not take asymmetry into account might be misleading.     

A modified LLC panel unit root test of the PPP hypothesis

In a recent study, Westerlund (Empir Econ 37:517–531, 2009) shows that the performance of the popular LLC (Levin et al., J Econ 108:1–24, 2002) panel unit root test depends critically on the choice of lag truncation used when correcting for serial correlation, and that it is only when this parameter is set as a function of time that the power raises above size. The purpose of the current paper is to propose a modified test that does not suffer from this drawback. The new test is not only simpler to compute but also superior in terms of small-sample performance, which is illustrated using an example purchasing power parity for less developed countries.     

International production chains and the pollution offshoring hypothesis: An empirical investigation

Most analyses of the impact of heterogeneous environmental policy stringency on the location of industrial firms have considered the relocation of entire activities – the well-known pollution haven hypothesis. Yet international enterprises may decide to only offshore a subset of their production chain – the so-called pollution offshoring hypothesis (POH). We introduce a simple empirical approach to test the POH combining a comprehensive industrial mergers and acquisitions dataset, a measure of sectoral linkages based on input-output tables and an index score of environmental policy stringency. Our results confirm the impact of relative environmental policy stringency on firms’ decisions to engage in cross-country M&As. Our findings also indicate that environmental taxation have a stronger impact on international investment decisions than standards-based policies. Further, we find that transactions involving a target firm operating in a sector upstream of the acquirer are more sensitive to environmental policy stringency, especially when that sector is highly pollution-intensive. This empirical evidence is consistent with the pollution offshoring hypothesis.     

An experimental test of the crowding out hypothesis

We report the results of laboratory experiments that examine whether third-party contributions crowd out private giving to charity. Subjects play a single dictator game with a charity as the recipient. The subject chooses his preferred charity from a list. There are four treatment combinations: two initial allocations and two frames. Initial allocations are either US$18 for the subject and US$2 for the charity, or US$15 and US$5, respectively, and the subject is then given the opportunity to allocate additional funds if desired. The decision frame is also varied to affect subjects' perceptions of the task. In one frame, subjects are simply informed of the initial allocations between themselves and their chosen charity. In the other, subjects are told that their US$20 allocation has been taxed, and the amount allocated to their chosen charity. The structure of payoffs is identical in both frames. In the first frame, we see a level of crowding out that is close to zero, far less than other experimental studies; in the second frame, we observe nearly 100% crowding out.     

Induced innovation: an empirical test

A method is developed to empirically test the hypothesis of induced innovation as it has been specified and used in the theoretical literature. A strong and a weak version of the hypothesis is tested using sectorial data from the USA, Canada, Germany, France and the UK. The strong version tests for the exact dependency of the relation between the change in factor-productivities on the one hand and relative prices and actual factor-productivities on the other hand. The weak version only tests for the direction of this dependency. In all countries the weak hypothesis is accepted in all sectors except in ‘electricity, gas, and water’. The strong hypothesis is accepted in about half of all sectors. It is rejected only in sectors, in which the degree to which progress is intentional is low.     

Education and happiness: an alternative hypothesis

Recent research has documented a negative relationship between education and happiness. We test the hypothesis that the extent to which education makes an individual happy depends on their current age in life. We find suggestive evidence that people with higher education are more likely to be happier, on average, than their less educated counterparts starting in their early to mid-30s.     

以购买力平价测算基尼系数的尝试

本文考察了全球化对我国城市贫困人口收入的影响。我们发现,尽管平均收入的增长伴随着收入分配的恶化,但是全球化,尤其是贸易开放,提高了贫困人口收入占总收入的份额。我们还发现对外贸易和FDI对收入分配的影响不同。贸易对收入分配的有益效果并不局限于沿海省份。自1992年以来这一有益效果减弱了。     

Explaining the World Heritage List: an empirical study

The UNESCO World Heritage List is designed to protect the global heritage. We show that, with respect to countries and continents, the existing World Heritage List is highly imbalanced. Major econometric determinants of this imbalance are historical GDP, historical population, area in square kilometers of a country, and number of years of high civilization. Surprisingly, economic and political factors, such as membership on the UN Security Council, which should be unrelated to the value of a country’s heritage and therefore should have no impact, are shown to have a systematic impact on the composition of the World Heritage List.     

Prostitution services: an exploratory empirical analysis

This study provides an empirical analysis of the market for some male prostitution services in the UK. Flexible working hours, part-time working, and multiple job holding are considered as important labour market characteristics in this service sector. Statistical models helping explain the provision of a deviant and a more mainstream sexual service is reported, utilizing cross-section data drawn from individual prostitute advertisements. The significance of various declared intrinsic endowments of the prostitutes are examined in relation to the offer of these services, including age, ethnicity, physique, and masculine demeanour.     

Understanding domestic savings: an empirical approach

ABSTRACT

There are two unusual and important features in the evolution of the savings rate in Chile. First, the economy increased the average savings rate by 11 percentage points in the period 1985–2013 compared to 1960–1984, mainly due to a large change in private savings rate (10 percentage points), and an additional 1 percentage point from the public sector. The second feature is related to the change in the composition of private savings. After several years of nearly no corporate savings, this component became an important part of total savings reaching an average of almost 10% of Gross National Disposable Income (GNDI) during the period 1986–2012. Our results show that the 1984 tax reform, the boost in the marginal productivity of capital and the deepening of the financial market were the main drivers that explain the dramatic increase in corporate savings. We also found that the reduction in personal income tax after the tax reform and the higher income per capita growth helped to explain the increase in household savings, while the structural balance rule helped to explain the increase in public savings.