On the determination of maximum accuracy for regression processes with endogenous variable constraints

Optimal regression design is studied for a sequential problem in which the experimenter wishes to constrain the probable value of a dependent variable to the vicinity of a given target. In the context suggesting the problem, the dependent variable is an effluent, and the target arises from anti-pollution regulation.     

Food away from home expenditures and obesity among older Europeans: are there gender differences?

Older people (i.e., at least 50?years of age) are becoming one of the most important demographic groups in the world. We explore the effect of food away from home expenditures on obesity among the older population in Europe using instrumental variable methods. Several statistical tests were conducted to assess endogeneity of selected variables, the exogeneity, relevance, and validity of instruments used. Our results generally suggest that food-away-from-home expenditure has no statistically significant effect on body mass index (BMI) of older males but is negatively related to BMI of older females.     

The White Paper on Growth,Competitiveness and Employment and Greek Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

This paper makes an assessment of the homo-genous approach and policy measures towards SMEs, adopted by the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment and by national policies in Greece. It is demonstrated that there is a key distinction between the structure of competitive, high-tech, highly-specialized SMEs in advanced countries, whose size is determined by the size of the international niche market where they compete, on the one hand and on the other, SMEs in Greece or in other less developed member-states, whose (micro) size is determined by the local markets they serve, while in most cases they do not have the marketing skills/approach to address export markets. Copying successful instruments for SMEs in advanced countries can thus be most dangerous for the less developed countries, since the industrial organization of the typical SME is very different from those SMEs in Northern Europe. Therefore, the effects of policy measures, without further modifications, will be different from those envisioned by the EU policy-makers. Increasing the utilization of assistance by SMEs in less developed member-states is likely to be more effective if the assistance focuses on incentives and services, which support cooperative action in local and foreign markets, rather than on direct SME financing.     

Measuring the Magnitude of Significant Market Power in the Manufacturing and Services Industries: A Cross Country Approach

This paper provides estimates of price-marginal cost ratios for manufacturing and services sectors in the Eurozone, the US and Japan over the period 1970–2007. The estimates are obtained applying τhe methodology developed by Hall (J Pol Econ 96:921-947 1988) and extended by Roeger (J Pol Econ 103:316-331 1995) on the EU KLEMS March 2011 database. The empirical findings show that sectors that are more open to internationalisation such as textiles, experience relatively the lowest mark up ratios, while policy makers should enhance their policy in fragmented industries in which profitability indicators of market players indicate evidence of imperfect competition. The major stylized facts that are emerged from the empirical results based on the Ordinary Least Squares, Two Step Least Squares and Bootstrap methods of estimation are a) there is no evidence of imperfect competition across the majority of industries in Eurozone, US and Japan, b) sectors that are more open to internationalisation, experience relatively lower mark up ratios than the ratios experienced in less open sectors to internationalisation and c) deregulated industries generally have lower mark – up ratios than regulated industries, while fragmented industries generally exhibit higher mark – up ratios than segmented ones.     

Minimum wage spillover effects and social welfare in a model of stochastic job matching

In this paper, I carry out a welfare analysis of the minimum wage in the framework of a Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides model with stochastic job matching. I explore the role of the minimum wage in a labor market with trading externalities and present the necessary and sufficient condition for a minimum wage hike to be efficiency enhancing. In this context, I characterize minimum wage spillover effects and demonstrate that there is a direct link between the welfare effects and spillover effects of a minimum wage. This theoretical finding suggests that the welfare impact of minimum wage changes can be inferred from the empirical observation of spillover effects on the wage distribution.     

In search for the most preferred solution in value efficiency analysis

Journal of Productivity Analysis - Choosing the Most Preferred Solution (MPS), namely a real or artificial Decision Making Unit (DMU) reflecting the decision maker’s preferences over the...     

R&D contribution in TFP growth of Greek industry: A limited information likelihood approach

We provide a novel panel model to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the Greek industry at the firm level while we tackle the contribution of R&D. We, therefore, opt for parametric methodology that provides statistical inference and would validate the results. Our modeling departs from prior strong assumptions such as error terms across firms being independent. In fact, we provide a novel limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation method that adequately deals with the issue of endogeneity and model misspecification. We demonstrate that our model detects variability in terms of TFP growth components across industries and firms. Our results show that R&D would enhance TFP of Greek firms, albeit the crisis has had a detrimental impact. Financial ratios such as liquidity and solvency ratios also affect TFP as we demonstrate that both would enhance TFP. The solvency ratio is important as it provides an estimate of whether the firm can cope with debt. We also note variability across small versus medium and large firms and report that small firms are more productive and spend more of their revenues on R&D. In terms of policy, our evidence warrants higher R&D spending to enhance TFP growth, though R&D funding is a concern.     

Tourism-led growth asymmetries in Greece: evidence from quantile regression analysis

Portuguese Economic Journal - The paper provides fresh empirical evidence on the tourism-growth relationship for Greece over the period 1977Q1-2020Q2. We find that the long-run relationship between...