Forecasting with Medium and Large Bayesian VARS

This paper is motivated by the recent interest in the use of Bayesian VARs for forecasting, even in cases where the number of dependent variables is large. In such cases factor methods have been traditionally used, but recent work using a particular prior suggests that Bayesian VAR methods can forecast better. In this paper, we consider a range of alternative priors which have been used with small VARs, discuss the issues which arise when they are used with medium and large VARs and examine their forecast performance using a US macroeconomic dataset containing 168 variables. We find that Bayesian VARs do tend to forecast better than factor methods and provide an extensive comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches. Typically, we find that the simple Minnesota prior forecasts well in medium and large VARs, which makes this prior attractive relative to computationally more demanding alternatives. Our empirical results show the importance of using forecast metrics based on the entire predictive density, instead of relying solely on those based on point forecasts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recasting Urban Governance through Leeds City Lab: Developing Alternatives to Neoliberal Urban Austerity in Co‐production Laboratories

This article reports on a research project, Leeds City Lab, that brought together partner organizations to explore the meanings and practices of co‐production in the context of urban change. Our intention is to offer a response to the crisis in urban governance by combining the growing academic and practitioner debates on co‐production and urban laboratories in order to explore radically different institutional personae that can respond to deficits in contemporary urban governance, especially relating to participation and disenfranchisement, and ultimately unlock improved ways of designing, managing and living in cities. Our analysis has identified four key ways in which co‐production labs can recast urban governance to more progressive ends: by moving beyond traditional organizational identities and working practices, embracing grey spaces of new civic interfaces, foregrounding emotions and power and committing to durable solutions. Ultimately, what we point towards is that urban governance can be more effectively enacted in co‐production labs that bring together universities and the public, private and civil society sectors on a basis of equality, trust and openness. These spaces have the potential to unlock a city's knowledge, resources and assets, to unpack complex challenges and to build capacity to deliver improved city‐wide solutions.     

Exploring the ethicality of firing employees who blog

This exploratory study evaluates the ethical considerations related to employees fired for their blogging activities. Specifically, subject evaluations of two employee‐related blogging scenarios were investigated with established ethical reasoning and moral intensity scales, and a measure of corporate ethical values was included to assess perceptions of organizational ethics. The first scenario involved an employee who was fired because of innocuous blogging, while the second vignette involved an employee who was fired because of work‐related blogging. Survey data were collected from employed college students and working practitioners. The findings indicated that the subjects' ethical judgments that firing an employee for blogging was unethical were negatively related to unethical intentions to fire an employee for blogging. Moral intensity was positively related to ethical judgments and negatively related to unethical intentions to fire an employee for blogging, while individual perceptions of ethical values were negatively associated with unethical intentions. Finally, subjects perceived that terminating an employee for innocuous blogging that did not target an employer was more ethically intense than was firing an employee for work‐related blogging. The implications of the findings for human resource professionals are discussed, as are the study's limitations and suggestions for future research. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Housing tenure transitions of older households: Life cycle, demographic, and familial factors

Understanding the housing choices of the older households will grow in importance as the baby boom generation starts to retire. This analysis utilizes a rich longitudinal data set (PSID) to provide insight into the reasons why older households make housing transitions. Because of the richness of the data, this analysis is able to control for life transitions, a household's income and wealth, and connection to one's children in predicting when a homeowner makes a housing transition. The results demonstrate that age is not related directly to housing tenure choice for older households. Instead, having lower health status and being a single head of household is the important predictor of housing tenure transitions. At the same time, very few life changing events immediately lead a homeowner to become a renter, although they do influence the decision to downsize or consumer home equity. Finally, living next to one's children lowers the probability of becoming a renter or downsizing, and having richer children increases the probability of downsizing and thereby consuming one's housing wealth.     

GROWING AN ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGY

Environmental management is becoming increasingly accepted as a key feature of business strategy. However, academic and practitioner publications on the subject develop few guides as to which processes to follow to integrate environmental concerns and strategy. A three-step strategic management process is proposed which incorporates concern for the natural environment throughout a firm's operations. This can result in the growth and nurturing of an organizational environmental strategy.     

Large time-varying parameter VARs

In this paper, we develop methods for estimation and forecasting in large time-varying parameter vector autoregressive models (TVP-VARs). To overcome computational constraints, we draw on ideas from the dynamic model averaging literature which achieve reductions in the computational burden through the use forgetting factors. We then extend the TVP-VAR so that its dimension can change over time. For instance, we can have a large TVP-VAR as the forecasting model at some points in time, but a smaller TVP-VAR at others. A final extension lies in the development of a new method for estimating, in a time-varying manner, the parameter(s) of the shrinkage priors commonly-used with large VARs. These extensions are operationalized through the use of forgetting factor methods and are, thus, computationally simple. An empirical application involving forecasting inflation, real output and interest rates demonstrates the feasibility and usefulness of our approach.     

Top manager and network effects on the adoption of innovative management practices: a study of TQM in a public hospital system

This paper reports findings from a study that combined two theoretical perspectives—top manager and network/institutional—to examine the factors influencing organizations to adopt innovative management practices. The study setting was a system of public hospitals and the innovation was Total Quality Management (TQM). Study results indicate that both top manager and network/institutional factors are important determinants of whether and when organizations adopt innovations. However, as predicted, the relative importance of these two sets of factors appears to change as an innovation becomes more widely diffused. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bayesian inference in a time varying cointegration model

There are both theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that the parameters of macroeconomic models may vary over time. However, work with time-varying parameter models has largely involved vector autoregressions (VARs), ignoring cointegration. This is despite the fact that cointegration plays an important role in informing macroeconomists on a range of issues. In this paper, we develop a new time varying parameter model which permits cointegration. We use a specification which allows for the cointegrating space to evolve over time in a manner comparable to the random walk variation used with TVP–VARs. The properties of our approach are investigated before developing a method of posterior simulation. We use our methods in an empirical investigation involving the Fisher effect.     

A review of: “ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES FOR FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT,” by Jerome S. Osteryoung and Daniel E. HcCarty,Grid Publishing Co., Columbus,Ohio, 1980, xii + 316 pages,paperback, list $10.95

Recently, Formato derived a useful formula of the amount of periodic equal payment in a skip payment loan with arbitrary skips using a second-order finite difference equation. We rederive his formula using simple arithmetics and provide an intuitive explanation of the formula. We also extend his result to the case that periodic payments occur in a geometric-gradient-series.