Bartlett correction in the stable second‐order autoregressive model with intercept and trend

This paper derives the Bartlett factors that can be used to obtain higher‐order improvements for testing hypotheses about the autoregressive (AR) parameters in the stable AR(2) model with possible intercept and linear trend. The factors are obtained for testing hypotheses about individual parameters (φ₁ and φ₂) as well as their sum. Moreover, the effect of deterministic terms on the correction factors is found explicitly. All corrections are non‐decreasing in the AR parameters. Furthermore, the Bartlett corrections for φ₁ and φ₂ tend to infinity as φ₂ approaches 1, whereas the correction for φ₁ + φ₂ tends to infinity as φ₁ + φ₂ is close to 1. The effectiveness of these Bartlett corrections in finite samples is evaluated by simulations.     

Hidden in plain sight: Correspondent banking in the 1930s*

Abstract

We present novel quantitative evidence on the number and location of correspondent banking relationships in the 1930s, a neglected area of international banking. Our data, collected from Thomas Skinners’ Bankers’ Almanac, captures over 2000 correspondent banking connections primarily based on London and New York and a smaller cohort of multinational banks. We draw on the new institutional economics and international business literature to explain the relative ubiquity of correspondent banking and the relative scarcity of multinational banks. Our argument that bilateral trade flows drive correspondent banking is tested empirically using an instrumental Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation.     

A framework for evaluating and designing collaborative planning

Collaborative planning processes have been criticized for inefficiency, but attempts to improve them in planning of urban nature have been limited by lack of usable evaluation methodologies. This paper presents a framework for evaluating and designing collaborative processes in strategic planning of land use and nature areas. A framework with four key perspectives and their success criteria was developed with the help of literature and data from interviews and focus groups in two case areas in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. Planning organizations can use the framework as a tool and source of inspiration in designing collaborative processes and their evaluation, and in shifting their practices towards the organizations’ own specified goals. A conscious design of more efficient and holistic collaborative planning can be achieved with case-specific operationalizing of this framework.     

Hybrid Forms Of Accountability: Citizen engagement in institutions of public-sector oversight in India

The public sector institutions which are responsible for monitoring government performance are not normally open to citizen participation. Yet there is widespread dissatisfaction with the capacities of states to exercise self-restraining functions effectively, and a growing interest amongst citizens to inform, monitor, or participate directly in the workings of these oversight institutions. This paper examines two citizen-initiated efforts in India to engage with public sector oversight functions. In one case, citizens attempted to engage with administrative accountability institutions (monitoring efficiency and quality in the food subsidy system), and in the second, citizens challenged official auditing systems in local government by producing parallel accounts of local spending which contradicted official versions. Both cases involved citizens breaking away from the ‘vertical’ channels of accountability traditionally open to civil society (lobbying, voting), and insinuating themselves to previously closed ‘horizontal’ accountability functions (the state's internal procedures for administrative review or financial auditing). We argue that for such ‘hybrid’ forms of accountability to be effective, it is important that citizens be given legal standing within institutions of public sector oversight, a continuous presence within the oversight agency's work, structured access to official documentary information, including spending records, and the right to issue dissenting perspectives directly to legislative bodies.     

Estimating financial distress likelihood

This study develops an ex-ante model for estimating financial distress likelihood (FDL), and contributes to the literature by presenting a financially-based definition of distress that is independent of its legal consequences, a theoretically supported model for the FDL, and an appropriate methodology that uses panel data to eliminate the unobservable heterogeneity. The model is then estimated cross-sectionally to obtain an indicator of the likelihood of financial distress that incorporates the specificity of each company. In doing so, this study provides a well-specified model that is stable in terms of magnitude, sign and significance of the coefficients and, more importantly, that yields a measure of the FDL that is more robust to time and the international context than the estimates of FDL that are based on seminal models. This measure could be appropriate for use in future research that deals with FDL, such as capital structure and the prevention of financial distress.     

Firm exits as a determinant of new entry: Is there evidence of local creative destruction?

This study posits that a local process of creative destruction provides an impetus to regional industrial renewal. We argue that exits of older firms release resources that stimulate local entry. New entrants add value to these resources by redeploying them in more productive uses. We test our hypotheses with a unique longitudinal database encompassing the entry and exit of Canadian manufacturing enterprises. We find that exits of old firms increase entry and that on average new entrants are more productive. Persistent high local rates of exit, however, deter entry.     

Estimating Crop-Specific Production Technologies in Chinese Agriculture: A Generalized Maximum Entropy Approach

A generalized maximum entropy approach is adapted to empirically estimate crop-specific production technologies in Chinese agriculture. Despite a modest behavioral assumption about equal marginal returns of nonland inputs among crops, this method does not require price information, which is usually distorted in a centrally planned economy such as China. A multi-output technology for Chinese agriculture is estimated and input allocations for each province are recovered simultaneously. The estimated multi-output production technology and input allocations imply that China may have greater grain production potentials than previously thought.     

北京市大华山镇发展生态经济农业研究

本文以发展生态农业成就突出的北京市大华山镇为例,阐述了生态农业持续高效发展的两个基础;立足市场需求,发挥区域优势。     

Shared renewable resources and gains from trade under technology standards

Using a two‐country, two‐good model of international trade, we examine gains from trade and strategic interaction in resource management among countries that share renewable resources such as fishery stocks. Two goods are a resource good, which is the harvest of the shared stock, and some other good that may be thought of as manufactures. The productivity of the resource good depends on harvesting technology and the stock level. This paper focuses on technology standards (e.g., restrictions on fishing gears, vessels, areas, and time) over other methods for resource management because they are most commonly implemented in fisheries. Technology standards are modeled as a restriction on the harvesting technology; that is, under strict technology standards, firms exploit resources as if they are using inferior harvesting technology. We show that an opening up of trade may reduce the shared stock and cause steady‐state utility to decrease in a resource‐good importing country and increase in a resource‐good exporting country. Strikingly, when the shared stock is in jeopardy (a high demand for the harvest), steady‐state harvest is maximized after an opening up of trade by what we call multilateral resource management in this paper and both countries gain from trade.     

Territorial identity and development: From topophilia to terraphilia

This paper brings about a conceptual and methodological framework for the study of topophilia and its enrichment in terms of development policy and actions seeking (re)affirmation of landscape-related and other territorial identity features. To this end, the results of an empirical verification of a newly introduced concept, named terraphilia, are presented. Records and assessments of the topophilia–terraphilia interface were carried out in the framework of the Identerra Model that enables empirical delimitation and systematization of the state (spatial fixes) and change (spatial flows) of natural, economic, societal and cultural features of territorial identity. The research area was the Oeste Region (a NUTS III, North-west of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area). The promotion of terraphilia may be important in the process of identification and assessment of strategically relevant elements of local and regional development, such as “sense of territorial belonging” and “territorial attractiveness”.