A test of the Wagner's hypothesis for the Fiji islands

In this article we examine Wagner's law for Fiji for the period 1970 to 2002. Using the Johansen (1988 Johansen, S. 1988. Statistical analysis of cointegrating vectors. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 12: 231–54. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) test for cointegration, we find one cointegration relationship between national output and government expenditure. Using five different long run estimators, we find robust results on the impact of national income on government expenditure. The elasticity ranges from 1.36 to 1.44, implying that a 1% increase in income leads to a 1.36–1.44% increase in government expenditure. Moreover, we find that in the long run national income Granger causes government expenditure. While these results are consistent with Wagner's law, we warn policy makers that because Fiji's total debt stands at around 69% of GDP, in future the bulk of expenditure will go towards debt financing at the expense of productive sectors.     

Real wages,inflation and labour productivity in Australia

This article presents an analysis of real wages, inflation and labour productivity interrelationships using cointegration, Granger causality and, most importantly, structural change tests. Applications of tests to Australian data over the 1965 to 2007 period corroborate the presence of a structural break in 1985 and show that a 1% increase in manufacturing sector real wages led to an increase in manufacturing sector productivity of between 0.5% and 0.8%. Comparable estimates for the effect of inflation on manufacturing sector productivity have limited statistical significance. Granger causality test results suggest that real wages and inflation both Granger cause productivity in the long run.     

Trend and cyclical decoupling: new estimates based on spectral causality tests and wavelet correlations

The issue of decoupling of emerging market economies (EMEs) (especially in the Asian region) from the developments in advanced economies has become a subject of lively debate in recent years. Basically, decoupling seems to comprise three sub-hypotheses: (i) growth spillovers from advanced countries to EMEs decreasing progressively in importance, (ii) business cycles in EMEs becoming less synchronized with those of the advanced world and (iii) strengthening of growth spillovers and cyclical synchronization among the EMEs as a group. The received literature fails to distinguish adequately between the trend and cyclical aspects of the decoupling relationship. We resort to two frequency domain methods (nonstationary spectral causality testing and wavelet correlations), which seem to offer a neat separation of trend and cyclical decoupling. Based on a sample of seven EMEs from the Asian region (including the two large EMEs – China and India), we uncover strong evidence favouring both trend and cyclical decoupling.     

Renewable and nonrenewable energy production and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa: a hidden cointegration analysis

The objective of this article is to investigate the hypothesis of asymmetric effects between economic growth and renewable and nonrenewable energy production. To this end, both the linear cointegration and the hidden cointegration methodology are employed, with the latter allowing a straightforward delimitation of the data in an economically sensible way. We test for the presence of hidden cointegration across 12 sub-Saharan African countries spanning the period 1971–2011. The empirical results confirm the growth hypothesis for a subset of countries, suggesting that their growth could be adversely affected by conservation policies, while for a second subgroup of countries they confirm the conservation hypothesis, indicating that conservation policies could enhance the growth process in these countries. The differentiation of the results could be captured entirely by the linear approach, indicating that the lack of cointegration between renewable energy production and economic growth found in previous studies may be due to failures to properly delimit the nonlinearity property in the data.     

Modelling the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System's Energy Consumption Under‐Coverage

The new data source for the Australian Energy Statistics, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, does not require businesses using less than 200 terajoules to report their energy consumption. This results in a data gap in the total industry energy consumption. To estimate the gap, this study models business energy consumption using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 2008–09 Energy, Water and Environment Survey and data from the 2008 to 2009 business activity statement unit record estimates. The article discusses the modelling approaches and methodological issues associated with the estimation of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System's energy consumption under‐coverage. It provides estimation results and suggestions for future research, based on available data.

     

Leveraging Virtual Attribute Experience in Video Games to Improve Brand Recall and Learning

This article extends the concept of virtual direct experience (VDE) from a product to an attribute as video gamers can virtually experience an attribute within a gaming environment. Using a 2 (VAE: present versus absent) x 2 (order of brand presentation: first or second) between subjects experimental design, we find that associating a brand with virtual attribute experience (VAE) by exposing consumers to the brand name and the virtual experience simultaneously has a positive effect on brand recall, brand extension acceptance, overall attitude, and purchase intention. In addition, our results demonstrate a significant interaction between VAE and telepresence on brand recall.     

Contextual and Competitive Interference: Inhibition or Facilitation?

Existing literature has found two sources of advertising interference, competitive and contextual, that decrease the effectiveness of an ad in a cluttered environment. However, to date, the negative impact of competitive and contextual interference has been examined independently. This research explores advertising effectiveness when these sources exist concurrently. Contrary to the supposition concerning the additive effects of both sources of interference when simultaneously present, our findings indicate that viewing ads for the same product category with similar executional elements leads to the dissipation of interference effects (Study 1). Consistent with the process rationale, when a product-brand cue (versus a picture cue) is provided, this novel effect disappears (Study 2). The implications of these findings for advertising are highlighted in the discussion section.     

Maximizing Profits for a Multi-Category Catalog Retailer

It is a common trend in the retail industry for catalog retailers to mail multiple catalogs, each promoting different product categories. The existing catalog mailing models do not address the issue of optimizing multi-category catalog mailing. We address this research gap by introducing a model that integrates the when and what components of a customer's purchase decision into the how much component (number of catalogs) of a firm's cross-selling strategy. In addition to comparing the impact of category-specific versus full product catalogs in generating sales in a specific category, the study also finds relative impacts of various category-specific catalogs. We jointly estimate the probability of purchase and purchase amounts in multiple product categories by using multivariate proportional hazard model (MVPHM) and a regression based purchase amount model in a Hierarchical Bayesian framework. The model accounts for unobserved heterogeneity, and uses a control function (CF) approach to account for endogeneity in catalog mailing. The results from the Genetic Algorithm (GA) based optimization suggest that the catalog mailing policy as per the proposed model would be able to generate 38.4 percent more customer lifetime value (CLV) from a sample of 10 percent of the households as compared to the current catalog mailing policy of the retailer by reallocation of the catalogs across customers and mailing periods based on their propensity to buy.     

Adoption of weather‐index insurance: learning from willingness to pay among a panel of households in rural Ethiopia

In this article we examine which farmers would be early entrants into weather‐index insurance markets in Ethiopia, were such markets to develop on a large scale. We do this by examining the determinants of willingness to pay for weather insurance among 1,400 Ethiopian households that have been tracked for 15 years as part of the Ethiopian Rural household Survey. This provides both historical and current information with which to assess the determinants of demand. We find that educated, wealthier individuals are more likely to purchase insurance. Risk aversion is associated with low insurance take‐up suggesting that models of technology adoption can inform the purchase and spread of weather index insurance. We also assess how willingness to pay varied as two key characteristics of the contract were varied and found that basis risk reduces demand for insurance particularly when the price of the contract is high, and that provision of insurance through groups is preferred by female headed households and individuals with lower levels of education.     

Is Asian per capita GDP panel stationary?

The goal of this paper is to examine whether per capita GDP for 15 Asian countries is panel stationary. We apply a panel test for stationarity that allows for multiple structural breaks developed by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (Econ J 8: 159–179, 2005). Our main findings are: (1) when we apply conventional tests, such as the ADF and KPSS univariate tests without structural breaks, we find little evidence for stationarity; (2) when we apply the KPSS univariate test with multiple structural breaks, we find evidence of stationarity for 10 out of 15 countries; and (3) when we apply the KPSS panel test with multiple structural breaks, we find overwhelming evidence of panel stationarity of per capita real GDP for different panels of Asian countries.