An Empirical Assessment of Endogeneity Issues in Demand Analysis for Differentiated Products

This article explores the issue of price and expenditure endogeneity in empirical demand analysis. The analysis focuses on the U.S. carbonated soft drink market. We test the null hypothesis that price and expenditures are exogenous in the demand for carbonated soft drinks. Using an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) specification, we strongly reject exogeneity for both prices and expenditures. We find that accounting for price/expenditures endogeneity significantly impacts demand elasticity estimates. We also evaluate the implications of endogeneity issues for testing weak separability.     

人力资本产权实现方式与公司绩效的内生性因素研究

随着人力资本对经济效益和公司绩效的影响越发显著,人们越发重视人力资本对公司绩效的影响。基于内生性因素视角下对人力资本产权实现方式与公司绩效的影响进行的研究表明,人力资本产权实现方式驱动公司绩效的因素主要有雇佣薪酬、股权性收益、参与权、控制权,公司绩效影响人力资本产权实现方式选择的因素则有增长机会、行业竞争程度、公司规模和生命周期等。研究进一步显示:将人力资本产权实现与公司绩效相关关系具体化,可以找出更具经济效益的人力资本产权实现方式,从而促进公司绩效的提升。     

Trade,scale or social capital? Technological progress in poor and rich countries

Endogenous growth theory suggests scale and trade as the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The literature on social capital suggests that the levels of trust and participation in societies may affect cooperation and innovation. While there is evidence of the role of trade and inconclusive evidence on the role of social capital, previous studies have generally omitted two factors, out of the three mentioned, used small sample sizes and emphasized economic growth rather than technological progress. Our study addresses these shortcomings. We find robust evidence of the role of trade in fostering technological progress which is invariant to TFP proxies and independent of the debate on measuring TFP. Moreover, there is no clear role for scale, and a country rate of TFP growth seems to increase the most the more the country trades with dynamic economies that are different from. We uncover a positive effect of social capital, which is more significant in richer countries, suggesting that other characteristics, such as institutional quality, may be complementary to social capital. The paper's results are robust to different specification and estimation methods.     

Southeastern European Trade Analysis: A Role for Endogenous CEFTA-2006?

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact the Central European Free Trade Agreement of 2006 (CEFTA-2006) has had on trade and provide quantitative comparison with the original CEFTA and with trade liberalization under the EU integration process. The paper belongs to the strand of literature analyzing a free trade agreement in a gravity framework but treating the agreement as being potentially endogenous. The empirical evidence suggests that CEFTA-2006 exerted a positive, significant, and large effect on trade in Southeast Europe. This finding can be largely attributed to the distracted trade flows in the region over the 1990s. The effect of CEFTA-2006 has been estimated to be larger than the effect of the stabilization and association agreements. This counteracts the concern that the EU and the Southeastern European countries formed a "hub-and-spoke" structure in terms of trade.     

A New Regime Switching Model with State–Varying Endogeneity

In this paper, we propose a state-varying endogenous regime switching model (the SERS model), which includes the endogenous regime switching model by Chang et al., the CCP model, as a special case. To estimate the unknown parameters in the SERS model, we propose a maximum likelihood estimation method. Monte Carlo simulation results show that in the absence of state-varying endogeneity, the SERS model and the CCP model perform similarly, while in the presence of state-varying endogeneity, the SERS model performs much better than the CCP model. Finally, we use the SERS model to analyze Chinese stock market returns, and our empirical results show that there exists strongly state-varying endogeneity in volatility switching for the Shanghai Composite Index returns. Moreover, the SERS model can indeed produce a much more realistic assessment for the regime switching process than the one obtained by the CCP model.     

The relationship between institutional ownership and casino firm performance

This study examined the relationship between institutional ownership and firm performance in the casino industry from 1999–2003. Given the evidence of the endogeneity of institutional ownership in the casino industry, institutional ownership was found to be a significant and positive determinant of casino firm performance as measured by a proxy for Tobin's Q in a simultaneous equations system. This study reveals that investing institutionally in casino firms may help casino industry investors mitigate the agency problem caused by the separation of management from ownership. In addition, financial institutions tend to invest in larger casino firms with lower financial leverage.     

Can remittances buy peace?

This paper offers new empirical evidence on the effects of remittance flows on conflict incidence, onset, and duration in recipient countries. It improves on previous studies by controlling for unobserved heterogeneity among remittance recipient countries, serial correlation of conflict, and the possibility of conflict being endogenous to remittances. To motivate the empirical findings, a micro‐founded model of conflict is developed. The model shows that wealth transfers (such as remittances) can raise the opportunity cost of participation in conflicts which can lead to a reduction in both the number of rebels and the force used by the government forces.