The structure of bias in peer voting systems: lessons from the Eurovision Song Contest

This paper assesses whether and how common characteristics of jury members or peer voters affect the outcomes of voting systems. In particular, we analyze to what extent these common features result in voting bias. We take as a case study the Eurovision Song Contest for which an extensive amount of historical data is available. In contrast to earlier studies we analyze the impact of common factors on the bias individually for each country, which is necessary to substantiate the publicly debated accusations of regional block voting by certain groups of countries. We establish strong evidence for voting bias in the song contest on the basis of geography, even after correction for culture, language, religion and ethnicity. However, these effects do generally not correspond to the usual accusations. We believe that our findings extend to all instances where groups of jury members or peer voters share certain common factors, which may cause voting bias. It is important to identify such structures explicitly, as it can help avoiding bias in the first place. The authors are grateful to Marieke van Dijk for excellent research assistance and to Laurens Swinkels, Ieva Pudane, Gijsbert van Lomwel, Jelena Stefanovic, and Bas van den Heuvel for useful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Kursprognose mit Hilfe der Technischen Analyse — Eine empirische Untersuchung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Foreclosure,REO, and Market Sales in Residential Real Estate

Assessment of lender and third-party bidder acquired properties at foreclosure auction is provided. Properties acquired at foreclosure auction by third-party bidders transact at a discount to lender dispositions of real estate owned (REO) properties. The discount reflects a reduction in costs associated with lender owned (REO) dispositions and uncertainty faced by third-party bidders. Moreover, there is a ranking in transaction prices among initial purchases by third-party bidders at foreclosure auction, REO sales, non-distressed property sales and the subsequent sales of third-party bidder acquired properties. Third-party bidder auction prices are below REO sale prices, which are below non-distressed property sale prices, which are below the subsequent sale prices of third-party bidder acquired properties. The price spacing by cohort is logical, intuitive and economically justified in a market with rational participants. Implications are also apparent for the measurement of price changes, net sale proceeds and returns to residential real estate.     

Does a central clearing counterparty reduce liquidity needs?

This study investigates whether and how central clearing influences the overall liquidity needs in a network of financial obligations. Utilizing the approach of flow network theory, we show that the effect of adding a central clearing counterparty (CCP) is decomposed into two effects: central routing, and central netting effects. Each effect can produce different liquidity needs according to different liquidity scenarios. The analysis indicates that adding a CCP in times of financial distress successfully reduces the overall liquidity needs if and only if the netting efficiency of the CCP is sufficiently high. Furthermore, once the economy is no longer in financial distress, higher netting efficiency of the CCP could conversely increase the overall liquidity needs. The results have implications for the effectiveness of CCPs in mitigating systemic risk in times of financial distress, and their operating costs once the distress has passed.     

A quantitative explanation of the low productivity in South–Eastern European economies: the role of misallocations

It is well known that southeast Europe is the least developed area in Europe. Using a methodology based on the idea of heterogeneous firms, this paper studies the degree to which firm heterogeneity and resource misallocation can explain the lower TFP in southeast Europe. The results show a significant degree of heterogeneity and resource misallocation, although the results are sensitive to the calibration used. There is evidence that firm-level productivity depends on firm size, while taxation negatively influences it. There is also some evidence that foreign-owned firms are more competitive, as are exporting firms. Results are generally robust across the various specifications used, but less so relative to the measure of productivity used. Additional evidence suggests that infrastructure-related obstacles as well as institutional instability drive the output distortion, while no factor is underlined as a significant driver of capital distortions, suggesting the need for better data sources for the latter.     

Dynamic pricing of electricity in the mid-Atlantic region: econometric results from the Baltimore gas and electric company experiment

The Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE) undertook a dynamic pricing experiment to test customer price responsiveness to different dynamic pricing options. The pilot ran during the summers of 2008 and 2009 and was called the Smart Energy Pricing (SEP) Pilot. In 2008, it tested two types of dynamic pricing tariffs: critical peak pricing (CPP) and peak time rebate (PTR) tariffs. About a thousand customers were randomly placed on these tariffs and some of them were paired with one of two enabling technologies, a device known as the Energy Orb and a switch for cycling central air conditioners. The usage of a randomly chosen control group of customers was also monitored during the same time period. In 2009, BGE repeated the pilot program with the same customers who participated in the 2008 pilot, but this time it only tested the PTR tariff. In this paper, we estimate a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) model on the SEP pilot’s hourly consumption, pricing and weather data. We derive substitution and daily price elasticities and predictive equations for estimating the magnitude of demand response under a variety of dynamic prices. We also test for the persistence of impacts across the two summers. In addition, we report average peak demand reduction for each of the treatment cells in the SEP pilot and compare the findings with those reported from earlier pilots. These results show conclusively that it is possible to incentivize customers to reduce their peak period loads using price signals. More importantly, these reductions do not wear off when the pricing plans are implemented over two consecutive summers. Our analyses reveal that SEP participants reduced their peak usages in the range of 18 to 33% in the first summer of the SEP pilot and continued these reductions in the second summer.     

Economic globalization and the change of electoral rules

This paper takes up an argument from Ronald Rogowski about the “natural affinity” between trade and an electoral system with proportional representation. We draw on literature on the historical determinants of electoral system choice to advance the general argument that trade integration and PR are related because the adoption of PR helps to secure gains from trade. Our specific model of electoral rule changes in the age of globalization predicts that the likelihood of electoral rule change towards more proportionality increases with levels of trade integration in the world economy. The theoretical model draws on a micro model of the distributive effects of increased economic integration. Because more proportional systems are more credibly able to commit to compensate the losers of globalization processes, there will be increased demand to change the electoral system towards more proportionality under economic circumstances that increase the costs of maintaining a closed economy. In accordance with our model, our empirical tests find a positive association between (a) trade integration and the proportionality of the electoral system, (b) proportionality and social spending, and (c) global integration levels and the probability of electoral rules changes that render voting rules more proportional.     

Structural changes,market growth and productivity gains of the US real estate investment trusts in the 1990s

The 1990s were tumultuous times for the US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) industry. Significant structural changes occurred during the decade, especially after the 1993 Revenue Reconciliation Act, which tremendously boosted the flow of funds into the system by allowing the participation of institutional investors in REITs. As a result, the industry experienced remarkable asset growth during the decade, with a large number of initial public offerings and substantial increases in market capitalization. Employing the Data Envelopment Analysis-type Malmquist index approach, this paper explores the impact of such environmental changes on productivity growth, efficiency change, and technological progress of REITs. Our results indicate that while efficiency of the REITs significantly increased, their average productivity declined and technology regressed during this decade. It appears that the typical REIT has failed to improve technically, but exerted substantial effort to catch up with the best practice ones relying mainly on aggressive growth strategies. However, our empirical results indicate that they might have overextended themselves as most began to suffer from diseconomies of scale.

Asymptotic inference for a one-dimensional simultaneous autoregressive model

A nonstationary simultaneous autoregressive model \({X^{(n)}_k=\alpha \Big(X^{(n)}_{k-1}+X^{(n)}_{k+1}\Big)+\varepsilon_k, k=1, 2, \ldots , n-1}\), is investigated, where \({X^{(n)}_0}\) and \({X^{(n)}_n}\) are given random variables. It is shown that in the unstable case α = 1/2 the least squares estimator of the autoregressive parameter converges to a functional of a standard Wiener process with a rate of convergence n ², while in the stable situation |α| < 1/2 the estimator is biased but asymptotically normal with a rate n ^1/2.