Institutional quality and public spending in Europe: A quantile regression approach

We appraise the effects of institutional quality on public spending for a set of 27 European countries and 18 Euro-area economies over the 1996–2017 period. While institutions play a weak role in affecting spending once the fixed-effects model is employed, the application of the quantile regression indicates that improved institutional quality mitigates public spending, although the effects crucially depend on the distribution of public expenditure and the sample examined. For both the Euro-area sample and the full sample, we show that better quality of institutions reduces public spending, although the effects become less significant the higher the levels of public spending. Further, for the Euro-area sample, institutions appear to have a stronger role in mitigating public spending. Several robustness tests confirm our findings.     

Market structure and market shares in the car industry

This paper examines empirically the impact of foreign competition, market structure and barriers to entry on the trade performance in the car industry. The pattern of international trade and structural characteristics of different markets are studied using OECD car industry data. By estimating fixed-effect regressions for major car producing countries, the results reveal that, for most countries, the market shares of exporters depend on cross-country differences in relative unit labor costs, differences in income levels, and differences in market structure.     

The Exporter Wage Premium Hypothesis: An Unconditional Quantile Regression and Decomposition Approach

ABSTRACT

Relying on the World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset in 2012/13, this paper applies the unconditional quantile regression and decomposition estimation techniques to examine the hypothesis that workers in exporting firms receive higher wages than those in non-exporting firms. The results show that the relationship between export and firm’s wage bill is indirect and is transmitted through technology and firm size. Remarkably, these indirect relationships are much more pronounced at the more upper quantiles of the wage bill distribution. However, the net relationships of the interaction between export and technology are relatively larger and positive as compared to that of the interaction between export and firm size which are marginal and mixed. The decomposition analysis indicates that much of the present exporter wage premiums are largely due to the differences in the returns to the characteristics between exporting and non-exporting firms. The findings from this paper suggest directions for future work that can be directly useful for policy.     

SCHUR CONVEX FUNCTIONALS: FATOU PROPERTY AND REPRESENTATION

The Fatou property for every Schur convex lower semicontinuous (l.s.c.) functional on a general probability space is established. As a result, the existing quantile representations for Schur convex l.s.c. positively homogeneous convex functionals, established on for either p= 1 or p=∞ and with the requirement of the Fatou property, are generalized for , with no requirement of the Fatou property. In particular, the existing quantile representations for law invariant coherent risk measures and law invariant deviation measures on an atomless probability space are extended for a general probability space.     

基于面板分位数回归的住宅价格影响因素分析

采用面板分位数回归方法,以全国35个大中城市为样本,利用2006—2015年的数据,对影响住宅价格的因素进行研究。结果表明：土地价格、人均储蓄余额、在岗职工平均工资、人口密度、空气质量对住宅价格有正向影响,每亿人医院或卫生院数量对住宅价格有负向影响;并且不同分位数水平下各影响因素的作用大小具有明显差异。研究结论对不同城市依据自身特征采取相应的调控政策具有一定的参考价值。     

Monetarizing Spillover Effects of Soil and Groundwater Contaminated Sites in Taiwan: How Much More Will People Pay for Housing to Avoid Contamination?

This study monetizes spillover effects of soil and groundwater contaminated sites using a quantile hedonic price model for different site types in Taoyuan City in Taiwan, which has 1664 sites, the highest number for any city in Taiwan. The results show that except for those living in the cheapest housing, most residents are willing to pay a higher price to live farther away from contaminated sites. Farmland makes up the largest share of the total contaminated site area and has the highest per square monetary spillover effects in Taoyuan City; remediation of farmland is one of the most urgent missions for the city. Overall, a NIMBY effect is found to exist for soil‐ and groundwater‐contamination in this city.     

证券投资基金收益概率密度预测——基于神经网络分位数回归模型

证券投资基金收益往往具有更高的峰度与更大的偏度,建立在古典假定基础上的均值回归分析难以给出准确预测结果。考虑到证券投资基金收益中的高峰、非对称等典型特征与各因素对收益序列的非线性影响模式,建立神经网络分位数回归模型,一方面,可以通过分位数回归功能,揭示各因素对证券投资收益整个条件分布的影响规律;另一方面,可以通过神经网络结构,模拟金融系统中的非线性关系。在神经网络分位数回归模型基础上,对证券投资基金收益整个条件密度函数进行预测,提供比点预测更多的有用信息,便于进行科学决策。     

Medium-term determinants of current accounts in industrial and developing countries: an empirical exploration

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the medium-term determinants of current accounts for a large sample of industrial and developing countries, utilizing an approach that highlights macroeconomic determinants of longer-term saving and investment balances. Cross-section and panel regression techniques are used to characterize the variation of the current account across countries and over time. We find that current account balances are positively correlated with government budget balances and initial stocks of net foreign assets. Among developing countries, measures of financial deepening are positively associated with current account balances while indicators of openness to international trade are negatively correlated with current account balances.     

Neural network approximation for superhedging prices

This article examines neural network-based approximations for the superhedging price process of a contingent claim in a discrete time market model. First we prove that the α-quantile hedging price converges to the superhedging price at time 0 for α tending to 1, and show that the α-quantile hedging price can be approximated by a neural network-based price. This provides a neural network-based approximation for the superhedging price at time 0 and also the superhedging strategy up to maturity. To obtain the superhedging price process for $t>0$, by using the Doob decomposition, it is sufficient to determine the process of consumption. We show that it can be approximated by the essential supremum over a set of neural networks. Finally, we present numerical results.