Overnight borrowing, interest rates and extreme value theory

We examine the dynamics of extreme values of overnight borrowing rates in an inter-bank money market before a financial crisis during which overnight borrowing rates rocketed up to (simple annual) 4000 percent. It is shown that the generalized Pareto distribution fits well to the extreme values of the interest rate distribution. We also provide predictions of extreme overnight borrowing rates using pre-crisis data. The examination of tails (extreme values) provides answers to such issues as to what are the extreme movements to be expected in financial markets; is there a possibility for even larger movements and, are there theoretical processes that can model the type of fat-tails in the observed data? The answers to such questions are essential for proper management of financial exposures and laying ground for regulations.     

Assessing French nursing home efficiency: An indirect approach via budget-constrained DEA models

In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) techniques are applied to the French nursing home industry in order to address two policy issues. The first involves nursing home size and returns to scale, while the second deals with the potential effects of a change in nursing home reimbursement from a flat rate to one based on the severity of case-mix. To accomplish this, our analysis expands on the existing nursing home literature to analyze technical and allocative efficiency along with budget-constrained models rather than the more common direct input-based distance function. Technical efficiency is evaluated via an indirect output distance function while allocative output efficiency is computed with a cost indirect revenue function. The findings suggest that system-wide efficiency and equity may result from coming reforms since payments would more accurately reflect resource use.     

Less Government—More Wealth? On the Macroeconomics of a Smaller Public Sector in Europe

In this paper, we analyze the reactions of European economies to a fiscal policy strategy aiming at diminishing the public sector. Within the framework of the MSG3 model, a macroeconomic model of the world economy, we perform several simulation experiments to explore the effects of reducing government expenditures permanently in different phases of the business cycle. For this purpose, we combine the fiscal contraction with negative and positive, Euro Area-wide and global, supply and demand shocks. It turns out that adverse Keynesian effects on output and employment tend to be mostly weak and short-lived, whereas long-run effects on output and employment are favorable. Due to these long-run effects, the fiscal contraction policy raises welfare as measured by an asymmetric quadratic objective function. The size of these welfare effects depends on the initial situation in a non-trivial manner.     

The structural transformation and aggregate productivity in Portugal

We document the substantial process of structural transformation—the reallocation of labor between agriculture, manufacturing, and services—and aggregate productivity growth undergone by Portugal between 1956 and 1995. We assess the quantitative role of sectoral labor productivity in accounting for these processes. We calibrate a model of the structural transformation to data for the United States and use the model to gain insight into the factors driving the structural transformation and aggregate productivity growth in Portugal. The model implies that Portugal features low and roughly constant relative productivity in agriculture and services (around 22%) and a modest but growing relative productivity in manufacturing (from 44 to 110%). We find that productivity growth in manufacturing accounts for most of the reduction of the aggregate productivity gap with the United States and that a further closing of this gap can only be accomplished via improvements in the relative productivity of services. This paper was written while the authors were affiliated with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. We would like to thank the editor, two anonymous referees, and participants at the Third Conference on Portuguese Economic Development in the European Context organized by the Bank of Portugal for their comments. All errors are our own.     

On the evolutionary edge of altruism: a game-theoretic proof of Hamilton’s rule for a simple case of siblings

We offer a game-theoretic proof of Hamiltons rule for the spread of altruism. For a simple case of siblings, we show that the rule can be derived as the outcome of a one-shot prisoners dilemma game between siblings.JEL Classification: A13, C70, D64Correspondence to: Oded Stark, ZEF, University of Bonn, Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, 53113 Bonn, GermanyWe are indebted to an anonymous referee and to Uwe Cantner for helpful comments and suggestions. Partial financial support from the National Institute on Aging (grant RO1-AG13037) and from the Humboldt Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

Foreign direct investment, competition and industrial development in the host country

This paper analyses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the development of local firms. We focus on two likely effects of FDI: A competition effect which deters entry of domestic firms and positive market externalities which foster the development of local industry. Using a simple theoretical model to illustrate how these forces work we show that the number of domestic firms follows a u-shaped curve, where the competition effect first dominates but is gradually outweighed by positive externalities. Evidence for Ireland tends to support this result. Specifically, applying semi-parametric regression techniques on plant level panel data for the manufacturing sector we find that while the competition effect may have initially deterred local firms’ entry, this initial effect has been outpaced by positive externalities making the overall impact of FDI largely positive for the domestic industry.     

THE JOINT ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE PROCESS FOR THE M/M/l QUEUE

We consider the M/M/1-queue and derive an explicit expression for the joint distribution of the number of arrivals and the number of departures in [0, t), given the number of customers initially present. The derivation is almost purely combinatorial, it avoids the use of generating functions, and immediately yields a simple probabilistic interpretation of the result.     

An equilibrium analysis of information aggregation and fluctuations in markets with discrete decisions

This paper shows how the interaction between decentralized information gathering and discreteness of investment decisions at the individual level can generate random fluctuations in aggregate investment that involve occasionally large allocation errors. This interaction is illustrated in a model in which private information is costly to acquire and prices reveal information. The unique rational expectations equilibrium outcome of the model is shown to always be noisy and characterized by investment levels which may be high simply because uninformed investors are buying under the impression that the high price is a signal of good investment opportunities.     

Delays and equilibria with large and small information in social learning

The general model of social learning with irreversible investment and endogenous timing is analyzed for any distribution of private informations. Strategic complementarities and multiple equilibria appear which are generated solely by information externalities. Different equilibria generate strikingly different amounts of information. The impacts of various assumptions (bounded beliefs, large number of agents, discrete time and short periods) are examined carefully. The properties are robust to the introduction of observation noise with a continuum of agents.     

Public choice interpretations of distributional preference

This essay examines, from the perspective of both economics and ethics, the logical foundations of income transfers in a democratic society that allocates resources, in the large, through free markets. Such transfers, enacted through the public choice process, modify the market-determined distribution of income, as a reflection of the distributional preferences of the members of a society. Both constitutional and post-constitutional explanations of redistributions are considered. A discussion of recent experimental evidence of distributional preferences leads into a critique of simple equality, built on Michael Walzer's distinction between monopoly and dominance, as a criterion of distributive justice.