Tourism as an alternative source of regional growth in Portugal: a panel data analysis at NUTS II and III levels

The role of tourism is of vital economic importance, particularly for small countries with a privileged geographical location and favourable weather conditions. This paper examines the importance of tourism as a conditioning factor for higher regional growth in Portugal by employing the conditional convergence hypothesis of Barro and Sala-i-Martin, associated with the endogenous growth theory. The panel data estimation approach provides evidence of the positive impact of tourism (through the accommodation capacity) on the growth in per-capita income among the Portuguese regions, increasing the rate of convergence. Therefore, tourism can be considered as an alternative source for stimulating higher regional growth in Portugal, if the supply characteristics of this sector are improved.     

Bayesian MCMC Mapping of Quantitative Trait Loci in a Half-sib Design: a Graphical Model Perspective

Graphical models provide a powerful and flexible approach to the analysis of complex problems in genetics. While task-specific software may be extremely efficient for any particular analysis, it is often difficult to adapt to new computational challenges. By viewing these genetic applications in a more general framework, many problems can be handled by essentially the same software. This is advantageous in an area where fast methodological development is essential. Once a method has been fully developed and tested, problem-specific software may then be required. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the potential use of a graphical model approach to genetic analyses by taking a very simple and well-understood problem by way of example.     

Conditioning as disintegration

Conditional probability distributions seem to have a bad reputation when it comes to rigorous treatment of conditioning. Technical arguments are published as manipulations of Radon–Nikodym derivatives, although we all secretly perform heuristic calculations using elementary definitions of conditional probabilities. In print, measurability and averaging properties substitute for intuitive ideas about random variables behaving like constants given particular conditioning information.
One way to engage in rigorous, guilt-free manipulation of conditional distributions is to treat them as disintegrating measures—families of probability measures concentrating on the level sets of a conditioning statistic. In this paper we present a little theory and a range of examples—from EM algorithms and the Neyman factorization, through Bayes theory and marginalization paradoxes—to suggest that disintegrations have both intuitive appeal and the rigor needed for many problems in mathematical statistics.     

Nonparametric efficiency analysis: A multivariate conditional quantile approach

This paper focuses on nonparametric efficiency analysis based on robust estimation of partial frontiers in a complete multivariate setup (multiple inputs and multiple outputs). It introduces α-quantile efficiency scores. A nonparametric estimator is proposed achieving strong consistency and asymptotic normality. Then if α increases to one as a function of the sample size we recover the properties of the FDH estimator. But our estimator is more robust to the perturbations in data, since it attains a finite gross-error sensitivity. Environmental variables can be introduced to evaluate efficiencies and a consistent estimator is proposed. Numerical examples illustrate the usefulness of the approach.     

Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people?—An experimental analysis

We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators (the nice(r) people) in an anonymous decision environment involving “connected games.” Participants can condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoners’ dilemma and a trust game on past individual (their partner’s donation share to a self-selected charity) and social (whether their partner belongs to a group with high or low average donations) information. Thus, the two measures of niceness are the individual donation share in the donation task, and the cooperativeness of one’s choice in the two games. We find that high donors achieve a higher-than-average expected payoff by cooperating predominantly with other high donors. Group affiliation proved to be irrelevant. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C91, C72, D3     

集聚效应对跨国公司在华区位选择的影响

本文以跨国公司区位选择微观理论为基础,利用条件Logit模型,对2007年《财富》世界500强中,1995年到2007年期间,457家美国子公司和537家欧洲子公司在华个体区位选择决定因素进行了实证分析。分析结果表明,集聚效应是样本公司区位选择的重要决定因素,在华投资的欧美制造业公司普遍采用"集聚"这一战略,其子公司大量集聚在东部地区,盲目吸收外资来缩小东—西部经济发展不平衡的政策并不合适,尤其是中部地区。因此,在文章末,本文对中国政府应该如何减小区域经济发展不平衡和合理引用外资提出了建议。     

Modelling return and conditional volatility exposures in global stock markets

This article empirically investigates the exposure of country-level conditional stock return volatilities to conditional global stock return volatility. It provides evidence that conditional stock market return volatilities have a contemporaneous association with global return volatilities. While all the countries included in the study exhibited a significant and positive relationship to global volatility, emerging market volatility exposures were considerably higher than developed market exposures. JEL Classification G12     

Dynamic volatility and external security related shocks: The case of the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper analyses the impact of exogenous national security related shocks on the time-varying volatility structure of the Greek stock market. Alternative autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic models are estimated, in order to identify the best fit that adequately describes return volatility behavior, testing symmetric as well as asymmetric innovation responses. An external national security related shock factor is included as well as a military crisis dummy, in order to depict possible implications for the conditional variance. The empirical findings appear to support a statistically significant impact of both national security related factors on the Athens stock market returns.     

A logistic regression point of view toward loss given default distribution estimation

We propose a new procedure to estimate the loss given default (LGD) distribution. Owing to the complicated shape of the LGD distribution, using a smooth density function as a driver to estimate it may result in a decline in model fit. To overcome this problem, we first apply the logistic regression to estimate the LGD cumulative distribution function. Then, we convert the result into the LGD distribution estimate. To implement the newly proposed estimation procedure, we collect a sample of 5269 defaulted debts from Moody’s Default and Recovery Database. A performance study is performed using 2000 pairs of in-sample and out-of-sample data-sets with different sizes that are randomly selected from the entire sample. Our results show that the newly proposed procedure has better and more robust performance than its alternatives, in the sense of yielding more accurate in-sample and out-of-sample LGD distribution estimates. Thus, it is useful for studying the LGD distribution.     

出口信用保险对我国出口贸易影响的实证分析

出口作为拉动经济发展的＂三驾马车＂之一,在我国经济发展中起到举足轻重的作用,为了促进出口贸易的发展,我国实施了多项出口贸易鼓励政策。本文对出口退税、出口信用保险、出口贸易三个变量进行协整分析,并通过VAR模型估计以及脉冲响应函数及方差分解的实证分析,得出三个变量的相互关系;同时通过两个因素的实证比较,得出出口信用保险虽然在短期内对出口贸易的影响还不够显著,但从长期看却是显著的,并且要大于出口退税对出口贸易的影响程度,最后提出发展我国出口信用保险的政策建议。