1,721,184 research outputs found
SeaTE: Subjective ex ante Treatment Effect of Health on Retirement
No full textThe paper studies the effect of health on work among older workers by eliciting 2- and 4-year-ahead subjective probabilities of working under alternative health states. These measures predict work outcomes. Person-specific differences in working probabilities across health states can be interpreted as Subjective ex ante Treatment Effects (SeaTE) in a potential outcomes framework and as taste for work within a discrete choice dynamic programming framework. There is substantial heterogeneity in expectations of work conditional on health. The paper shows how heterogeneity in taste for work correlated with health can bias regression estimates the effect of health on retirement
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Essays in managed exchange rates.
No full textThe main objective of this dissertation is to study aspects of the current regime of managed exchange rates. The first chapter provides an empirical analysis of the main sources of fluctuactions in the nominal and real exchange rates of the most industrialized countries. A structural VAR approach with long-run constraints is applied by assuming that nominal shocks do not have any long-run impact on economic variables, whereas real shocks can affect both short- and long-run components. It is found that real (technology-driven) shocks play an important role in explaining the fluctuations of both real and nominal exchange rates in the post-Bretton Woods period. The other two chapters focus attention on the recent history of the European Monetary System. In particular, Chapter 2 proposes a theoretical model of regime-switching from fixed to floating rates. The exit from the fixed exchange-rate regime is not due to speculative attacks, but is designed as an optimizing decision of the policymakers and is modeled as an optimal stopping-point problem with brownian-motion shocks. The model is then applied to the crisis of the European Monetary System in 1992-93 and to the future transition to the European Monetary Union. Finally, in Chapter 3 an empirical VAR analysis is applied to three European economies (France, Italy and the Netherlands) that have been members of the European Monetary System since 1979, but behaved differently with respect to the fixed exchange-rate constraint. The aim of the analysis is to test whether the different performances of the three countries were due to divergent monetary policies with respect to the center country (Germany). The results do not reject this hypothesis, but also show that the monetary policies in the most divergent countries (France and Italy) were justified by their higher macroeconomic cost in following Germany.PhDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105084/1/9635504.pdfDescription of 9635504.pdf : Restricted to UM users only
Essays in macroeconomics.
No full textThis dissertation has two major themes: (1) the effects of monetary policy and (2) productivity. The second chapter develops a theoretical, micro-founded model of pricing decisions and acquisition of information to explain the delayed response of inflation to nominal shocks as well as other facts about pricing at both the macro and micro levels. This model provides an information-based mechanism for the amplification and propagation of nominal shocks. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the combination of (a) the aggregate price level serving as a free endogenous public signal and (b) menu costs generates rigidity in price setting in flexible economies with imperfect, dispersed information. The third chapter presents a novel approach to identify structural shocks in vector autoregressions (VARs). The key idea is to impose a factor structure on observed innovations to macroeconomic variables. The chapter develops identification, estimation, inference, and selection procedures to implement this method. When applied to the U.S. macroeconomic data, this approach resolves three well-known VAR puzzles (the price level puzzle, the exchange rate puzzle, and excess policy volatility) and explains weak contemporaneous cross-variable responses (stickiness). The fourth chapter presents analysis of monetary policy rules when central bankers encounter uncertainty while measuring economic conditions. It is shown that commitment to correcting policy mistakes caused by the mismeasurement of economic conditions reduces the inflation and the volatility of economic activity. It is argued that the Federal Reserve System has been committed to correct policy mistakes and, thus, contributed to outstanding performance of the U.S. economy in the late 1990s. The fifth chapter makes three important contributions to measuring productivity and estimating returns to scale (RTS) with the micro level data. First, it is shown that because of data limitations many of the available estimates of RTS are for the revenue function, not production function. Second, the chapter proposes a full-information estimator that models the cost and the revenue functions simultaneously and deals symmetrically with productivity, factor prices and other structural shocks. Furthermore, it is proven that the share of economic profits in revenue is a robust, non-parametric diagnostic for estimates of RTS. Third, the chapter demonstrates that, in contrast to the proposed estimator, many of the popular estimators of RTS are inconsistent with simple economic arguments and tend to perform poorly in a wide range of settings.PhDEconomicsSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126697/2/3276166.pd
Essays in macroeconomics and international economics.
No full textThe dissertation consists of three distinct chapters that contribute to important, yet unresolved topics in Macroeconomics and International Economics. Macroeconomists have been puzzled by the lack of a downward trend in per capita labor hours. The first chapter provides an explanation to the puzzle based on improvements in the quality of jobs over time. Through regressions analyses using data from the Michigan Health and Retirement Study, the chapter documents the response of work hours to improvements in the nature of jobs. An estimation of the aggregate job quality index suggests that improvements in jobs accounted for at least 20.4 percent of labor hours growth between 1850 and 2000 in the United States. A general equilibrium analysis suggests that the improvement in job quality also caused 20.4 percent growth in consumption, capital, investment, and output over the same period. Economists and policymakers have also been interested in response of consumption to predictable income changes. The second chapter re-examines the issue in a context that circumvents several shortcomings in previous studies. The maturity date of a mortgage loan marks the end of mortgage payments for homeowners. Following the last payment, homeowners experience an increase in their discretionary income. The study interprets this event as an anticipated increase in income, and analyzes consumption behavior over the transition period using regression analysis. The results indicate that households do not increase nondurable goods consumption despite the increase in disposable income. Instead, they increase savings and expenditures on some durable goods. The third chapter studies the adverse effects of economic disintegration by focusing on the 1985--1993 South African economic embargo. Aggregate economic data show a substantial increase in the cost of capital during the embargo. The increase in the cost of capital coincided with a substantial decrease in the growth rates of capital, investment, output and consumption. Results from a neoclassical growth model calibrated to the South Africa economy indicate that output growth declined by 0.24 percent and per capita output was on average 1.18 percent lower as a result of the financial autarky. Estimates of the associated welfare loss stand at around 1 percent of consumption.PhDEconomicsSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125052/2/3186605.pd
The credit view of investment and monetary policy: A critical assessment.
No full textAccording to the credit view, there are strong causal links between monetary policy, bank loan supply, and investment and output. This dissertation investigates each of the links using various methodologies and data sets. The finding is that each of the links is questionable; that is, the causal relations between monetary policy, credit supply, investment and output may not be as important as claimed by the credit view. In the first chapter, I argue that because of an endogeneity problem of cash flow, liquidity effects on investment measured by cash flow are upward biased. An alternative test is to use non-operating income to measure the liquidity. I show that non-operating income, while also providing liquidity, does not have the endogeneity problem. The results show that liquidity effects are not important for inventory investment, but play important roles in capital investment. Using the text fields of stockholders reports, I also find evidence that inventory investment is more likely to be affected by economic fundamentals, rather than financing conditions. The second chapter uses a dynamic programming model to show that fluctuations in credit supply may not affect long run distributions of capital and output. This is possible if firms can adjust variable inputs to smooth investment. We especially emphasize the role of variable capacity utilization rate. When firms anticipate credit constraints, they could decrease the utilization rate and conserve more capital. During the constrained periods, firms can increase the utilization rate to keep the flow of capital service constant. The third chapter challenges the view that monetary policy directly affects credit supply, which in turn changes output. I propose an alternative hypothesis that the credit market does not respond directly to monetary policy but, instead, to the changes in the perceived default risk brought about by the changes in policy. Using a switching-regime disequilibrium model, I show that the default risk plays a quantitatively more important role than the monetary policy in explaining movements in bank loan supply. Thus, monetary policy does not affect output through the credit supply. The final chapter shows that costly bankruptcy can lead to credit rationing, even without the asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders.PhDCommerce-BusinessEconomicsFinanceSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131121/2/9825369.pd
On the microeconomic origins and macroeconomic consequences of lumpy firm -level pricing decisions.
No full textThe dissertation is composed of three related chapters that empirically examine different aspects of (S,s) pricing policies including their microeconomic and macroeconomic consequences. Chapter I presents evidence on various dimensions of pricing behavior at the store level and evaluates the findings in light of some recent macroeconomic theories of nominal price rigidity, primarily state-dependent ones. The analysis is based on a unique, high frequency panel of consumer prices recorded between 1993 and 1996 in Hungary. The main issues addressed in the paper include the durability of price quotations, the size, the frequency and the across-store and within-store synchronization of micro level price changes. The empirical evidence presented in the study shows that price adjustment patterns in the sample are mostly consistent with two-sided (S,s) models. By combining the observation that microeconomic price changes tend to be lumpy (or sticky) with insights obtained in the literature on aggregating optimal (S,s) policies, Chapter II develops an empirical framework rooted in microeconomic considerations to study the short-run dynamics of aggregate price changes. Utilizing a highly disaggregated panel data set of consumer prices, the paper examines the intertemporal evolution of price adjustment functions and the cross-sectional distribution of desired price changes, and their separate contribution to aggregate price changes. The shape of the former constructs is found to be broadly consistent with implications of two-sided (S,s) theory actually motivating their construction, and fluctuations in them appear to contribute to aggregate price dynamics. Finally, Chapter III evaluates the empirical significance of idiosyncratic shocks as determinants of the short-run dynamics in aggregate inflation. Employing identification schemes dictated by (S,s) pricing theory, product-level structural Vector Autoregressions comprised of aggregate inflation and relative price skewness are estimated. Robustly to different plausible identification assumptions, alternative definition of the relative price and to alternative measures of asymmetry in the relative price distribution, idiosyncratic pricing shocks are found to explain about 25 to 30 percent of the forecast error variance in inflation at the 12-month horizon. These shocks also appear to lead to substantial build-up in aggregate inflation after about 3 to 5 months following the initial disturbance.PhDCommerce-BusinessEconomicsSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131033/2/3042226.pd
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