Minnesota-type adaptive hierarchical priors for large Bayesian VARs

Large Bayesian VARs with stochastic volatility are increasingly used in empirical macroeconomics. The key to making these highly parameterized VARs useful is the use of shrinkage priors. We develop a family of priors that captures the best features of two prominent classes of shrinkage priors: adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors. Like adaptive hierarchical priors, these new priors ensure that only ‘small’ coefficients are strongly shrunk to zero, while ‘large’ coefficients remain intact. At the same time, these new priors can also incorporate many useful features of the Minnesota priors such as cross-variable shrinkage and shrinking coefficients on higher lags more aggressively. We introduce a fast posterior sampler to estimate BVARs with this family of priors—for a BVAR with 25 variables and 4 lags, obtaining 10,000 posterior draws takes about 3 min on a standard desktop computer. In a forecasting exercise, we show that these new priors outperform both adaptive hierarchical priors and Minnesota priors.     

On the use of profit data to estimate the social cost of monopoly power in an oligopoly

Relatively high estimates of the welfare cost of monopoly power in U.S. manufacturing industries have been obtained by economists who use the Lerner equation to estimate this welfare cost from profit data. These Lerner equation loss estimates are appropriate for a monopoly with constant costs and linear demand. But if the industry is an oligopoly in a Nash-Cournot equilibrium, the Lerner equation loss estimates can be more than twice as large as the actual welfare gain that would result from the elimination of monopoly power. Partial and general equilibrium examples are presented to illustrate the nature of these estimation errors.     

Citizen participation through computer conferencing

As American society grows more diverse and the issues that must be decided grow more complex, the need for new forums and better forms for public debate increases. Is computer conferencing likely to meet this need because of its potential for facilitating public participation in government? To shed light on this question, we constructed, ran, and observed a computer conference on recombinant DNA among four participants with no previous experience in using computers and no scientific training. Results indicate that not only was this topic successfully discussed by lay people in this way, but that the conferencing mode of discussion was preferred by certain types of people. Our experience also gave us insights that may improve management of computer conferences for inexperienced users.     

Estimating a Local Food Waste Baseline

ABSTRACT

This article estimates the amounts of food that is discarded, diverted, and landfilled in Minnesota by comparing and applying approaches and statistics from selected national, regional, and local studies. Our preferred estimates suggest 2.1 million tons of food is discarded in Minnesota, of which 60% is diverted through recovery and recycling efforts. The remaining 834 thousand tons are landfilled. This landfilled amount, considered as “food waste,” is smaller than the 1.3 million tons calculated using the ReFED (2016) methods, but its estimated distribution across the food supply chain is similar. Residential losses account for the largest proportion of food waste landfilled (43%). The processing and manufacturing stage discards the largest proportion of food (36%), but generates the smallest amount landfilled because of a high diversion factor. The range of estimates obtained from various methods highlights the complexities in choosing appropriate assumptions, factors, and datasets when calculating food waste baseline amounts.     

The Transmission of Monetary Policy in South Africa Before and After the Global Financial Crisis

This paper examines whether the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in South Africa has changed after the global financial crisis (GFC). We use a Bayesian vector autoregressive (BVAR) model with Minnesota priors and 15 monthly variables, extending the system of Christiano, Eichenbaum, with Evans (1999). The benefit of the BVAR approach is that it can accommodate a large cross section of variables without running out of degrees of freedom. To identify the change in the transmission process, we divide the sample size into two subsamples, namely the pre‐GFC period (March 2001 to August 2008) and the post‐GFC period (September 2008 to February 2016). The results indicate that a change in the transmission of monetary policy occurred after the GFC. The magnitude of the effect of a monetary policy shock on output is considerably greater in the pre‐GFC period compared to the post‐GFC period. Moreover, the impact of a policy shock on inflation is not statistically significant in the post‐GFC period. The variance decomposition shows that the interest‐rate channel has possibly weakened in the post‐GFC period.     

基于明尼苏达满意度短式量表的度假酒店员工满意度调查研究——以杭州某度假酒店为例

随着酒店业蓬勃发展,酒店员工满意度成为研究关注焦点,文章通过明尼苏达满意度短式量表对杭州某度假酒店员工进行调查分析,分别从工作条件、对领导者、个人责任感和外在奖励这四个方面分析员工的满意度,发现存在的问题及原因,继而从鼓励员工参与管理,改善工作条件、加强领导素质培训、发挥员工主观能动性,提高员工素质和责任感、改善奖励机制完善福利制度等方面提出改进策略。     

Managing frustration in the sales force

In the day-to-day operations, a sales manager must solve a multitude of problems. One such problem is dealing with behavior resulting from employees' frustration. Frustration-instigated behavior is different in kind from motivated or goal-directed behavior. Failure to recognize frustration-instigated behavior in a salesperson and to respond appropriately can have serious consequences. Because a salesperson often has little control over factors affecting his performance, he is particularly susceptible to frustration. This article tells how to recognize frustrated behavior and then describes six of the most common frustrating sales situations and how to deal with them.     

Operating leverage as a determinant of systematic risk

Since the development of the capital asset pricing model, a number of studies have examined the effect of a firm's operating leverage on its systematic risk. The essential conclusion of these studies is that operating leverage affects systematic risk through either the contribution margin or unit variable costs. In this paper, the models derived in previous research are refined and extended to demonstrate that, for either a single-product or multiproduct firm, the degree of operating leverage measures the full effect of a firm's operating leverage on its systematic risk. In addition, it is shown that a sales variability measure should also be an important differentiating factor among the systematic risk of common stocks. Thus, the results have important practical implications for financial managers when estimating project or divisional risk for investment decisions, and for security analysts when predicting the systematic risk of common stocks.     

Increase response to industrial surveys

The results of this article support the contention that a prenotification telephone call increases the probability of response to a mail survey request. The article also discusses the practical problems associated with the use of a telephone prenotification in an industrial setting and provides a step-by-step procedure to help overcome these problems.