Codependence in cointegrated autoregressive models

This paper investigates codependent cycles, i.e., transitory components that react to common stimuli in a similar, although not necessarily synchronous fashion. Unlike previous studies, the methodology of this paper allows FIML estimation of the restricted VAR/VECM and therefore the extraction of the unobserved codependent cyclical components via a Beveridge‐Nelson decomposition. It is further shown that the number and order of cofeature combinations that yield the scalar component models associated with codependence is limited by the dimension of a finite‐order VAR system. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that LR tests based on FIML estimates have higher power than alternative GMM and canonical correlations tests, while maintaining good size properties. An empirical application investigates the presence of codependence in UK consumption data. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Kein Stein der Weisen – Prognosen erfordern eine intelligente Nutzung

Die Prognosen der Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute werden in jüngster Zeit h?ufig wegen Ungenauigkeit kritisiert. Wodurch wird ihre Aussagef?higkeit eingeschr?nkt? Wie sollten sie interpretiert werden? Wie k?nnten die Prognosetreffsicherheit verbessert werden? Dr. Roland D?hrn, 52, ist Leiter des Kompetenzbereichs „Wachstum und Konjunktur“ und Prof. Dr. Christoph M. Schmidt, 44, ist Pr?sident des Rheinisch-Westf?lischen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung in Essen und Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für angewandte ?konometrie an der Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum. * überarbeitete und erweiterte Fassung eines unter dem gleichen Titel als RWI: Positionen #5 am 8.10.2005 erschienen Beitrags.     

Size,Growth, and Survival in the Upper Austrian Farm Sector

This paper investigates the evolution of the size distribution of more than 40,000 farms in the Upper Austrian farm sector over the period 1980–90. Using Gibrat's Law as our point of departure, we find that smaller farms grow much faster towards some minimum efficient scale of production than farms at or above this threshold size. We furthermore find evidence for the existence of two separate "centres of attraction" of farm size supporting the notion of a "disappearing middle" and the emergence of a bimodal structure of farm sizes. Correcting for size-related attrition bias had very little effect on our results.     

Labor market entry and earnings dynamics: Bayesian inference using mixtures‐of‐experts Markov chain clustering

This paper analyzes patterns in the earnings development of young labor market entrants over their life cycle. We identify four distinctly different types of transition patterns between discrete earnings states in a large administrative dataset. Further, we investigate the effects of labor market conditions at the time of entry on the probability of belonging to each transition type. To estimate our statistical model we use a model‐based clustering approach. The statistical challenge in our application comes from the difficulty in extending distance‐based clustering approaches to the problem of identifying groups of similar time series in a panel of discrete‐valued time series. We use Markov chain clustering, which is an approach for clustering discrete‐valued time series obtained by observing a categorical variable with several states. This method is based on finite mixtures of first‐order time‐homogeneous Markov chain models. In order to analyze group membership we present an extension to this approach by formulating a probabilistic model for the latent group indicators within the Bayesian classification rule using a multinomial logit model. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stock investments for German life insurers in the current low interest environment: more homework to do

Currently a stock market rally and at the same time extremely low interest rates can be observed. This coincides with more volatile risk premiums for interest baring assets like government bonds. The mixture makes life harder for investment managers of (especially life) insurances. They have to continuously find profitable investments with good returns for the customers’ money, in case of the life insurers, in order to be able to pay at least the promised returns of the contracts. After the stock market burst around the turn of the century the levels of stock investments by German insurers have declined significantly, therefore also missing out on the rises leading up to the Lehman crash and also not participating in recent developments. With insurance asset managers avoiding stocks in the past years the questions can be raised, if they are forfeiting a good opportunity for their portfolio and if there is still time to participate in possible future gains. On the other hand the upcoming regulatory environment, namely Solvency II, will play an important role in the future and likely already has an impact on the investment decisions of the companies. Higher capital requirements for stock investments make it even harder to earn the so-called “Garantiezins”. Without ignoring the risks related to stock investments, effectively banning equities from asset managers’ buy lists might lead to missing out on desperately needed returns for the life insurance industry. So policy makers probably should reconsider their directives. This paper evaluates the attractiveness of stock investments from a long term as well as a risk adjusted perspective using e.g. different indicators and commonly used measurements for stocks with a rather conservative focus, in order to possibly get some insight into the future performance of stocks. Looking back to a decade of boom and bust cycles in the equity markets does not necessary rule out stocks as an important source for returns. The results are discussed comprehensively also in face of the regulatory changes to come. In the end timing plays a major role and due to that the current valuation of stocks as well as the look ahead are of vital importance. Assessing the reliability of professional forecasts for financial market time series—in this context especially for stocks as well as interest rates—plays an important role for asset managers.     

A comment on “Egalitarianism and efficiency in repeated symmetric games” by V. Bhaskar [Games Econ. Behav. 32 (2000) 247-262]

We identify an error in Bhaskar?s (2000) Proposition 4. We provide counterexamples to this result and demonstrate that it is not correctable.     

Driving Trucks and Driving Sales? The Impact of Delivery Personnel on Customer Purchase Behavior

This study investigates how and under what conditions delivery persons, specifically truck drivers of a supplier firm, affect customers’ purchase behavior in industrial customer–supplier relationships. Drawing on service quality and customer contact literature, we test a proposed theoretical model that suggests a positive direct effect of personal contact quality (provided by a delivery person) on sales as well as three situational constraints that determine the occurrence and strength of the direct effect.     

Decentralized Taxation and the Size of Government: Evidence from Swiss State and Local Governments

According to the Leviathan Model, fiscal federalism is a binding constraint on revenue‐maximizing government. The competitive pressure of fiscal federalism reduces public sector size, as compared to unitary states. This study uses panel data of Swiss cantons from 1980 to 1998 to empirically analyze the effect of different instruments on government revenue and its structure. Because of the considerable tax autonomy of sub‐national Swiss governments, it is possible to investigate different mechanisms by which fiscal federalism may influence government size. The results indicate that tax exporting has a revenue‐expanding effect; whereas, tax competition favors a smaller size of government. Fragmentation has no robust effect on the size of government revenue for Swiss cantons. The overall effect of revenue decentralization leads to fewer tax revenues but higher user charges. Thus, revenue decentralization favors a smaller size of government revenue and shifts government revenue from taxes to user charges.