Estimation of poverty measures with auxiliary information in sample surveys

The analysis of poverty measures has been receiving increased attention in recent years. This paper contributes to the literature by developing percentile ratio estimators based on the pseudo empirical likelihood method. In practice, variances of poverty measures could be not expressible by simple formulae and consequently other techniques should be used in the variance estimation stage. Assuming percentile ratios, resampling techniques are investigated in this paper. A numerical example based on data from the Spanish Household Panel Survey is taken up to illustrate how suggested procedures can perform better than existing ones. The effect of a model-misspecification on the proposed estimators is also evaluated by using simulated populations.     

Minority owned banks and efficiency revisited

U.S. Government support for minority owned banks (MOBs) dates to the late 1960s. Evidence through the early 1990s suggested these banks are relatively inefficient. This study updates that research, using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and panel data from 2003 to 2014 on minority owned banks and other banks. It is, as far as we know, the first such study to exclude outliers in SFA estimation, while recovering the outliers for efficiency estimation. Initial results identify a disruption in cost efficiency during 2008, with statistically distinct regimes for 2003–2007 and 2009–2014. Including recovered observations alters the patterns of MOB efficiency in significant ways, and leads us to conclude that current MOB inefficiency is mainly limited to Asian American owned and Multi-racial and minority serving banks. Tests for the effects of government deposits under a U.S. Treasury program suggest these did not adversely effect efficiency among covered MOBs, but may have improved survival rates for those MOBs subsequent to the financial collapse.     

Cardinality-based equality of opportunities

We study possible rankings of opportunity profiles. An opportunity profile is a list of opportunity sets, one for each agent in the society. We compare profiles on the basis of the notion of “equality of opportunities”. Our main results show the necessary and sufficient conditions for this comparison to be made using exclusively the information provided by two cardinal measures: the number of common alternatives in all sets of a given profile and the difference between the number of alternatives in the individual sets. We also show that, under additional axioms, we can combine these criteria only in a weighted procedure or in some lexicographic refinements of a weighted procedure.      

Do liquidity induced changes in aggregate dividends signal aggregate future earnings growth?

Extant empirical literature does not provide abundant evidence for the information content hypothesis regarding firm-level dividend signaling. Although this is consistent with the argument against an optimal firm-level dividend policy, this does not imply an absence of an optimal aggregate dividend level. Aggregate dividends and earnings may exhibit stronger associations if aggregation filters out firm-specific earnings information and indicates macroeconomic trends. Using macroeconomic data, we show that aggregate payout ratios signal aggregate future earnings growth for horizons up to 4 years, and that excess aggregate liquidity plays an important role in this relationship.

Betwixt and Between: The Dilemma of Employee References

Concerns have arisen over employers' collection and sharing of information about employees, especially employment references. As a result of the dramatic growth in the number of lawsuits brought by employees, many employers have seriously curtailed the information they release concerning current and former employees. However, even the refusal to release information carries a legal risk. Employers who do not obtain information concerning applicants can be liable for negligent hiring, and those who knowingly withhold negative information regarding their former employees may be liable for negligent referral. This paper explores these expanding liabilities and suggests strategies to allow employers to manage the risk of communicating employee references.     

Disaster relief routing: Integrating research and practice

Disaster relief presents many unique logistics challenges, with problems including damaged transportation infrastructure, limited communication, and coordination of multiple agents. Central to disaster relief logistics is the distribution of life-saving commodities to beneficiaries. Operations research models have potential to help relief agencies save lives and money, maintain standards of humanitarianism and fairness and maximize the use of limited resources amid post-disaster chaos. Through interviews with aid organizations, reviews of their publications, and a literature review of operations research models in transportation of relief goods, this paper provides an analysis of the use of such models from the perspective of both practitioners and academics. With the complexity of disaster relief distribution and the relatively small number of journal articles written on it, this is an area with potential for helping relief organizations and for tremendous growth in operations research.     

International automotive production networks: how the web comes together

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence for the connections between new trade theory and the spatial distribution of economic activities, considering the results obtained by the literature on New Economic Geography as a starting point. To do this, we apply Social Network Analysis specifically to the World Automotive Trade Network. We explore the structural features of the auto network for the years 1996 and 2009 using data on trade flows for 172 countries. Our findings suggest that the auto network has become denser, more extensive and more integrated over time, depicting a center-periphery structure in which regional clusters play a prominent role. In this configuration, strong agglomeration forces generated by companies’ desire for large and rich market access with minimum transportation costs are balanced by the search for new high-potential markets.