An Empirical Test of Reder Competition and Specific Human Capital Against Standard Wage Competition

A firm that faces insufficient supply of labor can either increase the wage offer to attract more applicants, or reduce the hiring standard to enlarge the pool of potential employees, or do both. This simultaneous adjustment of wages and hiring standards has been emphasized in a classical contribution by Reder (1955) and implies that wage reactions to employment changes can be expected to be more pronounced for low wage workers than for high wage workers. We test this hypothesis (together with a related hypothesis on firm-specific human capital) by applying a bootstrap-based quantile regression approach to censored panel data from the German employment register. Our findings suggest that market clearing is achieved by a combination of wage and hiring standards adjustment

General Trimmed Estimation: Robust Approach to Nonlinear and Limited Dependent Variable Models

High breakdown-point regression estimators protect against large errors and data con- tamination. Motivated by some { the least trimmed squares and maximum trimmed like- lihood estimators { we propose a general trimmed estimator, which unifies and extends many existing robust procedures. We derive here the consistency and rate of convergence of the proposed general trimmed estimator under mild -mixing conditions and demon- strate its applicability in nonlinear regression, time series, limited dependent variable models, and panel data.consistency;regression;robust estimation;trimming

Azacitidine for treating acute myeloid leukaemia with more than 30% bone marrow blasts: A Single Technology Appraisal

Report commissioned by the NIHR HTA ProgrammeThis report was commissioned by the NIHR HTA Programme as project number 15/64/10

Decomposing Firm-level Sales Variation

We measure the contribution of firm-specific effects to overall sales variation within a destination and find it remarkably low. Our empirical decomposition is structurally motivated by a heterogeneity model of exporting involving destination-specific, firm-specific, and firm-destination-specific latent effects with incidental truncation. We use a highly detailed dataset with exports by products and destinations for all Danish manufacturing firms. We find the contribution of firm-specific heterogeneity to within-destination sales variation varies greatly across HS6 products, and that for the median product it drives 31% of the sales variation. When we remove first-time exports from our sample, the median value increases to 40%, implying that firm-destination-specific effects are most important the first year. We conclude that while firm-specific productivity can account for some of the variation, the majority is explained by firm-destination-specific heterogeneity sources such as firm-destination-specific demand.firm heterogeneity; firm-level export data; truncation correction

"Bayesian Estimation of Demand Functions under Block Rate Pricing"

This article proposes a Bayesian estimation method of demand functions under block rate pricing, focusing on increasing one, where we first considered the separability condition explicitly which has been ignored in the previous literature. Under this pricing structure, price changes when consumption exceeds a certain threshold and the consumer faces a utility maximization problem subject to a piecewise-linear budget constraint. Solving this maximization problem leads to a statistical model that includes many inequalities, such as the so-called separability condition. Because of them, it is virtually impractical to numerically maximize the likelihood function. Thus, taking a hierarchical Bayesian approach, we implement a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation to properly estimate the demand function. We find, however, that the convergence of the distribution of simulated samples to the posterior distribution is slow, requiring an additional scale transformation step for parameters to the Gibbs sampler. These proposed methods are applied to estimate the Japanese residential water demand function.

A Dynamic Tobit Model for the Open Market Desk's Daily Reaction Function

A dynamic Tobit model with Time-varying parameters is proposed for the daily reaction function of the Open Market Desk of the US Federal Reserve. Such a model offers a more realistic depiction of the Desk's behavior than those of past contributions in the literature as it allows for both possible dynamics in the Desk's daily operations and for day-to-day time varying responses of the Desk to changing conditions in the reserves markets and in the short-term interest rates. Ensuing computational complications are overcome by employing Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques for the estimation of the model. The results reveal a rich pattern of dynamic behavior by the Open Market Desk both inside the maintenance period and across maintenance periods and point towards a Desk which is highly adaptable to evolving conditions both in the economy in general and in the market for reserves in particularReserves, Federal Funds Rate, Open Market Operations, Open Market Desk, Censored Models, Data Augmentation, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Gibbs Sampling, Time-Varying Parameter Models

General Trimmed Estimation:Robust Approach to Nonlinear and Limited Dependent Variable Models

High breakdown-point regression estimators protect against large errors and data con- tamination. Motivated by some { the least trimmed squares and maximum trimmed like- lihood estimators { we propose a general trimmed estimator, which unifies and extends many existing robust procedures. We derive here the consistency and rate of convergence of the proposed general trimmed estimator under mild -mixing conditions and demon- strate its applicability in nonlinear regression, time series, limited dependent variable models, and panel data

"Bayesian Estimation of Demand Functions under Block-Rate Pricing"

This article proposes a Bayesian estimation of demand functions under block-rate pricing by focusing on increasing block-rate pricing. This is the first study that explicitly considers the separability condition which has been ignored in previous literature. Under this pricing structure, the price changes when consumption exceeds a certain threshold and the consumer faces a utility maximization problem subject to a piecewise-linear budget constraint. Solving this maximization problem leads to a statistical model in which model parameters are strongly restricted by the separability condition. In this article, by taking a hierarchical Bayesian approach, we implement a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation to properly estimate the demand function. We find, however, that the convergence of the distribution of simulated samples to the posterior distribution is slow, requiring an additional scale transformation step for parameters to the Gibbs sampler. These proposed methods are then applied to estimate the Japanese residential water demand function.

Decomposing Firm-level Sales Variation

We measure the contribution of \u85rm-speci\u85c e¤ects to overall sales variation within a destination and \u85nd it remarkably low. Our empirical decomposition is structurally motivated by a heterogeneity model of exporting involving destination-speci c, \u85 rm-speci\u85c, and \u85rm-destination-speci\u85c latent e¤ects with incidental truncation. We use a highly detailed dataset with exports by products and destina-tions for all Danish manufacturing \u85rms. We \u85nd the contribution of \u85rm-speci\u85c heterogeneity to within-destination sales variation varies greatly across HS6 prod-ucts, and that for the median product it drives 31 % of the sales variation. When we remove \u85rst-time exports from our sample, the median value increases to 40%, implying that \u85rm-destination-speci\u85c e¤ects are most important the \u85rst year. We conclude that while \u85rm-speci\u85c productivity can account for some of the variation, the majority is explained by \u85rm-destination-speci\u85c heterogeneity sources such as rmdestination-speci c demand

Occupational upgrading and the business cycle in West Germany

"The occupational skill structure depends on the business cycle if employers respond to shortages of applicants during upturns by lowering their hiring standards. The notion and relevance of hiring standards adjustment was advanced by Reder (1955) and investigated formally in a search-theoretic framework by Mortensen (1970). Devereux (2002) implements empirical tests for these theories and finds affirmative evidence for the U.S labour market. We replicate his analysis using German employment register data. Regarding the occupational skill composition we obtain somewhat lower but qualitatively similar responses to the business cycle despite of well known institutional differences between the U.S. and German labour market. The responsiveness of occupational composition wages to the business cycle is considerably lower in Germany." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Konjunkturabhängigkeit, berufliche Qualifikation, Qualifikationsanforderungen, Personalanpassung, Personaleinstellung, Lohnhöhe, Geschlechterverteilung