Political patronage and analysts’ forecast precision

We test whether the channel by which the government plays the role of political patron to selected firms influences analysts’ forecast precision in Malaysia. Correcting for analysts’ self-selection bias, we find a negative relation between analysts’ forecast errors and the social dimension of political patronage, as proxied by government-controlled institutional ownership. The reverse is found for the economic dimension of political patronage, as proxied by the percentage shareholding of government-linked corporations. We find no evidence that the personal dimension of political patronage influences analysts’ forecast precision.     

Gentrifier? Who,Me? Interrogating the Gentrifier in the Mirror

Schlichtman and Patch suggest that there is an elephant sitting in the academic corner: while urbanists often use ‘gentrification’ as a pejorative term in formal and informal academic conversation, many urbanists are gentrifiers themselves. Even though urbanists have this firsthand experience with the process, this familiarity makes little impact on scholarly debate. There is, Schlichtman and Patch argue, an artificial distance in accounts of gentrification because researchers have not adequately examined their own relationship to the process. Utilizing a simple diagnostic tool that includes ten common aspects of gentrification, they compose two autoethnographic memoirs to begin this dialogue.     

What is the potential growth rate of the U.S. economy,and how might policy affect it?

The answer to the question “What will future potential growth be?” is as important as it is unknowable. This paper attempts to predict future U.S. potential output growth by combining what is unknown (future productivity growth, the performance of the labor market) with what is known (the evolution of the age structure of the population). It does so in two ways. First, this paper uses the historical experience of potential labor productivity growth, labor force participation, and weekly hours to simulate a range of outcomes for future potential growth—finding a 90% confidence interval that ranges from 0.7% annual growth to 3.0% annual growth, centered by construction around the Congressional Budget Office projection of 1.8% annual growth. Second, the paper examines a range of specific economic policies that the Trump Administration might pursue in terms of their impact on economic growth both in the short run and over the next decade—finding that an outer bound of these policies could be plus or minus 0.5 percentage point on the annual growth rate, but that these policies would most likely subtract a small amount from growth.     

Re-examining the economic determinants of alcohol consumption in Canada: controlling for the presence of common correlated effects

Alcoholic beverages represent both an important source of revenue and a driver of expenditure for provincial governments in Canada. As a result, the pricing of alcoholic beverages has substantial public policy implications. In this context, we re-examine existing work estimating the demand for three classes of alcoholic beverage (beer, wine, and spirits) by controlling for common correlated effects. The results reveal that any conclusions regarding the government’s ability to influence alcohol consumption is sensitive to the assumption that the relationship between the demand for alcoholic beverages and economic variables is identical across provinces.     

Contradictions of the Climate-Friendly City: New Perspectives on Eco-Gentrification and Housing Justice

As local governments and corporations promote ‘climate friendliness’, and a low-carbon lifestyle becomes increasingly desirable, more middle- and upper-income urban residents are choosing to live near public transit, on bike- and pedestrian-friendly streets, and in higher-density mixed-use areas. This rejection of classical forms of suburbanization has, in part, increased property values in neighborhoods offering these amenities, displacing lower-income, often non-white, residents. Increased prevalence of creative and technology workers appears to accelerate this trend. We argue that a significant and understudied socio-environmental contradiction also occurs where the actual environmental outcomes of neighborhood transformation may not be what we expect. New research on greenhouse gas emissions shows that more affluent residents have much larger carbon footprints because of their consumption, even when reductions in transportation or building energy emissions are included. We describe an area in Seattle, Washington, the location of Amazon's headquarters, experiencing this contradiction and show a distinct convergence of city investments in low-carbon infrastructure, significant rises in housing prices and decreases in lower-income and non-white residents. We conclude with a discussion of a range of issues that require more attention by scholars interested in housing justice and/or urban sustainability.     

Same Boundary Management Preference,Different Outcome: Toward a Gendered Perspective of Boundary Theory Among Entrepreneurs

Work‐family boundary research debates whether family demands should be integrated or separated from work demands. Our thesis is that the impact of boundary management preferences on business performance depends on the entrepreneur's gender. We also investigate how family‐to‐business support and business location alter the gender and boundary management preference interaction. Results show that an integration preference enhances business performance for men regardless of family‐to‐business support or business location. A segmentation preference aids women's business performance, especially among those with high family‐to‐business support and an independent business. An integration preference yields greater business performance for women with an at‐home business.     

THE EFFECTS OF LOTTO GAME CHANGES AND LARGE JACKPOTS ON INCOME ELASTICITIES AND SALES

Using daily lottery data from Washington State by zip code from January 2011 through mid‐March 2016, we estimate that Powerball income elasticities range from ?0.16 to 0.16 as the Powerball jackpot increases from its minimum to $1.5 billion, while Mega Millions income elasticities range from ?0.08 to 0.03 as the Mega Millions jackpot increases from its minimum to $640 million. Controlling for jackpot size, each of three major game changes during this time period has a significant effect on own‐game and cross‐game sales. Despite these significant game changes, however, these lotto games are a highly regressive source of revenue for Washington State. (JEL H22, H71, L83)     

Assessing Variability of Complex Descriptive Statistics in Monte Carlo Studies Using Resampling Methods

Good statistical practice dictates that summaries in Monte Carlo studies should always be accompanied by standard errors. Those standard errors are easy to provide for summaries that are sample means over the replications of the Monte Carlo output: for example, bias estimates, power estimates for tests and mean squared error estimates. But often more complex summaries are of interest: medians (often displayed in boxplots), sample variances, ratios of sample variances and non‐normality measures such as skewness and kurtosis. In principle, standard errors for most of these latter summaries may be derived from the Delta Method, but that extra step is often a barrier for standard errors to be provided. Here, we highlight the simplicity of using the jackknife and bootstrap to compute these standard errors, even when the summaries are somewhat complicated. © 2014 The Authors. International Statistical Review © 2014 International Statistical Institute