Choosing to keep up with the Joneses and income inequality

We study a variant of the conventional keeping-up-with-the-Joneses setup, in which heterogeneous-ability agents care both about consumption and leisure and receive an utility premium if their consumption exceeds that of the Joneses’. Unlike the conventional setup in which all agents are assumed to want to participate in the rat race of staying ahead of the Joneses, our formulation explicitly permits the option to drop out. Mean-preserving changes in the spread of the underlying ability distribution, via its effect on the economy-wide composition of rat-race participants and drop-outs, have important consequences for induced distributions of leisure and income, consequences that are unobtainable using conventional keeping-up preferences.     

Sustainability in the Stochastic Ramsey Model

Journal of Quantitative Economics - In this paper we provide a self-contained exposition of the problem of sustaining a constant consumption level in a Ramsey model. Our focus is on the case in...     

Determinants and impacts of subcontracting: evidence from India’s unorganized manufacturing sector

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagnant, asset-poor informal sector firms that use cheap family labour in home-based production. However, direct, firm-level evidence on the determinants and impact of subcontracting is thus far lacking in the literature. We apply a modified Heckman selection model to Indian National Sample Survey data on informal manufacturing enterprises (2005–2006). We find that home-based, relatively asset-poor, and female-owned firms are more likely to be in a subcontracting relationship. Further, we perform selectivity-corrected Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition and calculate treatment effects to show that subcontracting benefits smaller firms, firms in industrially backward states and rural firms; it is harmful for larger firms, firms in industrially advanced states, and urban firms. Our results suggest that the effects of subcontracting are more complex than those predicted by the divergent perspectives. Policy-makers need to engage with this complexity.     

Melting pot or salad bowl: Some evidence from U.S. investments abroad

We estimate the number of foreign-origin persons in the United States classified by their country of origin from census data in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. We find, both in cross-sectional tests and in panel data tests, that the size of the foreign-origin group from a country living in the U.S. is positively correlated with U.S. investments in that country. This national origin bias is strong for direct (FDI) and modest for indirect (equity holdings) investments. The results continue to hold even after controlling for the “fundamentals” hypothesized to affect foreign investments. The other economic geography variables of a country—physical distance from the U.S., race, language and religion—do not seem to affect US investments in that country.     

Imported Intermediates,Absorptive Capacity and Productivity: Evidence from Ghanaian Manufacturing Firms

This paper analyses whether the use of imported intermediates improves productivity using firm‐level panel data of manufacturing firms in Ghana covering the period between 1991 and 2002. This includes examining the importance of absorptive capacity (ABC) in enhancing the productivity gains from imported intermediates. We propose lagged relative productivity as a new measure of ABC. For any given period, ABC is defined as the natural logarithm of a firm's total factor productivity (TFP) in the previous period relative to the firm's initial TFP. An alternative measure of ABC considers real value added per worker in lieu of TFP. Overall, we find that firms with high levels of ABC derive productivity gains from the contemporaneous and prior use of imported intermediates, particularly for firms operating in the input‐intensive industries. Our findings are robust to different specifications of the base model and different estimation techniques.     

Business Growth,Size and Age: Evidence from the Business Longitudinal Survey (BLS) Data in Australia

Despite the important role small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) play in the Australian economy, little is known from empirical literature on the formation, growth and frequent dissolution of these businesses. Considering the dynamics of business behaviour, this article analyses the performance, business formation (or dissolution) and variability of growth. Using only available Business Longitudinal Survey (BLS) data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), manufacturing businesses are considered for the analysis. Firm growth, the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail (or survive) depend on firm age. Incorporating the age for Australian businesses, we are able to explain the importance of maturity in analysing growth and survival process of SMEs.     

Testing conditional symmetry against one-sided alternatives in square contingency tables

For a (k×k) square contingency table with ordered categories, letX(Y) denote the row (column) number. The conditional symmetry model is given byP(X=i, Y=j|X<Y)=P(X=j, Y=i |X>Y), ∀i<j. In this paper, we study the likelihood ratio tests of conditional symmetry in a square contingency table against two particular classes of one-sided alternatives. We obtain the maximum likelihood estimators under each alternative. The asymptotic null distributions of the likelihood ratio statistics are shown to have chi-bar square type distributions. A simulation study is performed by comparing the powers of different tests. The theory developed is illustrated by using the famous eye vision data from Stuart (1953).     

“本土杀手”如何抗击全球危机

2009年，“本土杀手”正面临来自多方的压力，如更大的成本波动、政府首要措施的变化以及国际品牌认知与世界级研发能力的挑战，但是这些压力并没有阻止挑战者实现它们的增长雄心。从整体上说，它们通过适应和增强自身业务来应对这些压力。