Revisiting Cheerful Jane and Miserable John: the impact of income,good health,social contacts and education declines with increasing subjective well-being

This short note seeks to replicate the quantile regression analysis in Binder and Coad (2011), but taking into account individual-specific fixed effects (FE; using the British Household Panel Survey data set). It finds declining effects of the four main variables of interest (health, social life, income, education) over the quantiles of the subjective well-being distribution, with attenuated effect sizes for the FE model. Equivalized log income has a negative impact on subjective well-being throughout the distribution. Apart from a number of robustness checks, existing research is extended by looking into the quantile effects of the above variables on a set of domain satisfactions.     

Returns to education and gender gap

The Italian gender wage gap is related to a gap in returns to education which causes a sizable glass ceiling effect. The gap is detected by quantile regressions implemented in different subsets. Quantile regressions allow computation of both the average gap and the divergence in the tails of the wage distribution. Comparison of the equations estimated separately for men and women, reveals a divergence in wage determinants for the average and for all quantiles. The statistical relevance of this divergence is verified by a test of changing coefficients. By repeatedly implementing this test to compare subsets of different regions, cohorts, and education levels, it is possible to rank the factors affecting the gap and to pinpoint at which quantile their impact is greater. Gender turns out to be a relevant source of changes to the coefficients, particularly for the top quantiles, and the regional variable interacts with the returns to education gap, determining a sizeable glass ceiling on southern women’s careers.     

Fourier nonlinear quantile unit root test and PPP in Africa

We test the PPP hypothesis in 29 African countries using a newly developed nonlinear Quantile unit root test with a Fourier function which accounts for smooth breaks. Simulation indicates that the proposed new test has higher power than the conventional Quantile unit root test as proposed by Koneker and Xiao (2004). Our empirical results provide support for the PPP hypothesis in 21 out of 29 African countries, a unique discovery using their real effective exchange rates. It appears that incorporating Fourier function to nonlinear Quantile unit root test gets us closer and closer to solving the PPP puzzle in Africa.     

The income elasticity of household energy demand: a quantile regression analysis

This article examines variation in the income elasticity of household energy demand across the energy expenditure distribution using expenditure data from the five most recent Household Budget Surveys (HBSs) in Ireland: the 1987, 1994/1995, 1999/2000, 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 HBS. The analysis uses a two-stage instrumental variable quantile regression approach and is based on each HBS cross section, as well as the overall pooled observations. The estimated elasticities are compared across low- and high-energy-consumption scenarios and to a benchmark elasticity estimated using two-stage least squares. The results provide evidence that there is significant variation in the income elasticities across the energy expenditure distribution and that care must be taken when using the constant mean elasticity for policy purposes. More specifically, any examination of the future impact of a change in income support policy measures on energy consumption should recognize the substantial context-dependent variation in the income elasticity.     

Labour market institutions,crisis and gender earnings gap in Eastern Europe

We study gender pay inequality in ten Central and Eastern EU countries before (2007) and during the economic crisis (2009) using quantile regression methods. The analysis reveals remarkable cross‐country diversity in levels and patterns of the gender gap along the earnings distribution; for the majority of the countries the crisis is associated with declining male/female disparities. We address the role played by labour market institutions in shaping the observed gender pay gap levels and patterns. Labour market deregulation increases gender inequality at the middle and at the top of the pay distribution, but reduces disparities at the bottom. Higher union density and wage coordination reduce the pay gap, with stronger equalizing effects on better‐paid jobs. The crisis seems to weaken the already poor role of institutions in the low‐pay sector.     

Quantiles,corners, and the extensive margin of trade

We develop a simple method for the estimation of quantile regressions for corner solutions data (i.e., fully observed non-negative data that have a mixed distribution with a mass-point at zero), focussing particular attention on the case where the domain of the variate of interest is bounded both from below and from above. We use the proposed method to study the determinants of the extensive margin of trade and find that most regressors have very different impacts on different parts of the distribution.     

Sustainability of current accounts: evidence from the quantile unit-root test

Regarding the stationarity of current accounts, previous studies used panel unit-root tests to improve the power of augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) test. This paper applies a quantile autoregression (QAR) approach to improve ADF test in the presence of outliers, and found that first, the stationarity was present in a QAR framework, rather than ADF test. Second, current accounts exhibited symmetric (e.g. Taiwan) and asymmetric patterns, which showed that positive shocks in larger quantiles induce current accounts to adjust towards a long-term equilibrium for Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. Japan exhibited an asymmetric pattern in response to negative shocks in smaller quantiles.     

Modelling the heterogeneous effects of stocking rate on dairy production: an application of unconditional quantile regression with fixed effects

This article analyses the effects of stocking rate on dairy production, using New Zealand dairy farm business data for the period 2005–2014. Unlike previous studies that assume a homogenous relationship between stocking rate and dairy production, we contribute to the literature by investigating the heterogeneous effects of stocking rate on milksolids production and applying an unconditional quantile regression model with fixed effects to control for unobserved farm-specific traits that are time invariant. The empirical results show that stocking rate exerts significant heterogeneous effects on milksolids production at different quantiles. In particular, we find that an additional increase in stocking rate (i.e. one cow/ha increase) increases milksolids production per hectare by between 17% and 25% but decreases milksolids production per cow by between 5% and 12%. In addition, we find that milking interval, dairy breed, farm labour, access to irrigation and farm location are important factors that increase milksolids production.     

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。