No Trade, Informed Trading, and Accuracy of Information

We present a model in which there is uncertainty about realization of a risky asset value for an informed trader. We introduce two states such that in the "narrow" state the informed trader has better information than in the "wide" state. Then, we show that the informed trader in the wide state does not trade in equilibrium if the information that the informed trader with better information has is sufficiently accurate and the probability of the narrow state is sufficiently high. We use the framework presented by Glosten and Milgrom (1985) and extend the assumption that the informed trader knows the terminal value of the risky asset. Finally, we obtain the conditions under which the informed trader would not trade in equilibrium.Market microstructure; Glosten-Milgrom; Price formation; Asymmetric information; Bid-ask spreads.

Testing William Baumol’s “Toward a Newer Economics: The Future Lies Ahead!â€

20 years ago, William Baumol provided an interesting wish list that outlined his hopes for the future of economics over the next hundred years. Impatiently, this paper puts his wish list to the test by comparing the characteristics of publications that appeared in the American Economic Review before Baumol’s contribution in 1991 (1984 to 1988) and those published 20 years later (2004 to 2008), and by looking at the Job Openings for Economists between 1991 and 2009. Focusing on issues such as the role of mathematics, the short-run orientation of macroeconomics, the emphasis of economic history versus the history of economic ideas, as well as a more concrete menu of wishes for applied economics, we observe that this was not just a wish list, but is in many ways a list that offers an accurate picture of what has changed over time and what has happened in recent years.American Economic Review, William Baumol, Mathematics, Macroeconomics, Applied Economics, Job Openings

Do Men and Women-Economists Choose the Same Research Fields?: Evidence from Top-50 Departments

This paper describes the gender distribution of research fields in economics by means of a new dataset about researchers working in the world top-50 Economics departments, according to the rankings of the Econphd.net website. We document that women are unevenly distributed across fields and test some behavioral implications from theories underlying such disparities. Our main findings are that the probability that a woman works in a given field is positively related to the share of women in that field (path-dependence), and that the share of women in a field decreases with their average quality. These patterns, however, are weaker for younger female researchers. Further, we document how gender segregation of fields has evolved over different Ph.D. cohorts.Banco de Santande

Review of the Book \u3ci\u3eShakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] Befitting a former journalist, Kirp\u27s book is extraordinarily well-written; once one picks it up it is hard to put down. Some economists may be put off by a book that contains no equations, tables, figures or regression results. Such an attitude, however, would be misguided and any academic economist interested in better understanding how market forces are reshaping higher education should read Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line

Review of the Book \u3ci\u3eIn Pursuit of the Ph.D.\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] When William Bowen, the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (formerly the President of Princeton University), and Neil Rudenstine, the President of Harvard University (formerly Executive Vice President of Mellon), combine to write a book on doctoral study in the arts and sciences, the academic profession must take notice. And well it should. Building on Bowen and Julie Ann Sosa\u27s (1989) predictions of forthcoming shortages of Ph.D.\u27s in the arts and sciences, In Pursuit of the Ph.D. provides a detailed analysis of the propensity of American college graduates to enter doctoral programs in the arts and sciences and of doctoral students\u27 completion rates and times-to-degree. Bowen and Rudenstine also carefully analyze the role that labor market characteristics, financial support patterns, institutional characteristics, and graduate program policies play in influencing these outcomes. Finally, they both implicitly and explicitly lay out an agenda for future research. In Pursuit is thus a must read for faculty and administrators involved in graduate education and for economists interested in higher education and academic labor supply issues

Central Bank Economic Research: Output, Demand, Productivity, and Relevance

The economic research of 30 central banks in OECD and Latin America countries from 2000 to 2007 is evaluated in this study. An international comparison based on four indexes that measure central bank research output, demand, productivity and relevance is included. From this view, the European Central Bank, the United States Federal Reserve Bank-Board of Governors- and the Bank of Canada showed the best results. The Central Bank of Colombia achieves an important position among the central banks selected for the study and holds that position in most of the indexes. Three aspects of research were examined in depth: i) focus of the research agenda, ii) the way research is organized, and iii) strategies for its development for six leading central banks in the sample, based on the results of the measure, including the Central Bank of Colombia. The study shows a tendency of central banks to develop studies with academic institutions. This practice allows them to broad the range of their analysis, by having an outside perspective, while getting expertise with recent techniques and theories for better economic analysis, which contributes to policy design.Central Banks, economic research. Classification JEL: E59, A11.

Qualification Strategies in ICT for Europe and Romania

In the international comparison significant differences regarding the future demand come into view. In Romania and Portugal, where the ICT qualification is dominated by universities degrees, the companies correspondingly see the biggest demand on qualification level 5M (masters’ degree). For Portugal this is the only group where companies see a significantly higher demand in the near future. For the Czech Republic and Germany only one fifth of the companies say there will be a higher demand on university based level 5M and in the Netherlands, it is even less, with only 10% of the companies. In these three countries - and particularly in the Czech Republic - almost half of the companies foresee a higher demand on level 5B.ICT practitioners, ICT training, vocational education and training

A Bibliometrics Portrait of Chinese Research through the Lens of China Economic Review. A research proposal.

Notwithstanding, in the last two decades, there has been a noticeable increase in published work on the research field of Chinese economy. There are few studies, which analyze the evolution of Chinese economics research, and the weight of international economics within it, by resorting to objective methods, namely bibliometrics. Giving our focus on Chinese economics related research, we select to base our empirical analysis on the “seed journal” China Economic Review (CER), which is the most important economic journal especially concerned with the issues of Chinese economy. We classify and assess all the (522) articles that were published in CER from its genesis (1989) up to December 2010. We construct three main databases: the first database as bibliographic database that contains the more than 500 articles published in CER, where we classify articles by themes (such as Macroeconomics, Microeconomics and International Economics) and types(such as formal vs. empirical); the second database includes the references of those 500 articles, which we denominate ‘roots of Chinese economics research’; and the third database, the ‘influence of Chinese economics research’, where we have all the studies that cited (more than 3000 references) the 500 articles published in CER. By undertaking an exploratory statistical analysis on the three databases - bibliographic database, ‘roots’ database and ‘influence’ database, we are able to assess three main group of issues: 1) the importance, within Chinese economics of the topic ‘international economic’; the types of research that are pursued in the period of analysis (formal vs empirical); and the most prolific authors in the area; 2) the ‘roots’ of Chinese economics, that is, who and which outlets are influencing most Chinese economics research; 3) the scope of influence of Chinese economics literature.Evolution of research, Economics, Bibliometrics, China Economic Review

OPPORTUNITY COST OF EDUCATIONAL HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT. APPLICATION FOR THE POSITION OF BENEFICIARY-INVESTOR

The present paper focuses on providing a model of applying the opportunitycost concept on investments in human educational capital. In the first part we haveshown that the real costs of educational capital investment does not involve direct andindirect educational costs only but also the opportunity costs, i.e. the earnings that arelost by choosing to invest in education (and not in something else). From our researchthere results the fact that the share of the opportunity cost within the total of theinvestment in educational capital is 60% that is a great share in rapport with other typesof investments. Further on, we have shown that the recovery of the investment isdetermined by two main factors: money and time. The first factor is the growth of revenuethat the skills acquired through higher education bring into relation with the situation"without education" and the second is the duration measured in years, in order that thequestion of revenue growth, investment are fully recovered and bring additional revenue(similar profit). The main conclusion of the present paper is that investment in educationhas a significant positive effect on the dynamics of the relationship between age andearnings, which weakens or even undoes the effect of the high level of opportunity cost ofthis type of investment. The argument for investment in human capital and education plus"non-market income" or "non-monetary effects" of education relates mainly to the rolethat education has on the quality of life. As a long term investment, education brings apermanent increased certainty of a better situation and it increases social developmentand social promotion.opportunity cost, educational human capital, investment in education

Keeping Up With Fashion: Recent Trends in the Subfields of Study of Doctoral Students in Economics

We conduct an analysis of recent trends on the subfields of study that doctoral students in economics choose for their dissertations. By investigating data on the JEL classification codes of dissertations reported by the Journal of Economic Literature from 1991 to 2007, we find that the trends in the subfields of study of doctoral dissertations follow those of articles published at five major general-interest journals (American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and Review of Economics and Statistics). In particular, the co-movement pattern is salient in subfields such as Microeconomics (D), Health, Education, and Welfare (I), and Economic Development and Growth (O). Our findings suggest that the fashion exhibited in the top-notch research journals is one of the most influential factors when doctoral students choose a subfield.Economics Research, Doctoral Dissertation, Journal Publication, Ph.D. Economist, Economics Job Market