Auctioning airport slots (?)

The current allocation of slots on congested European airports constitutes an obstacle to the effective liberalisation of air transportation undertaken in Europe. With a view to favouring efficient slot utilisation and competition, as is the goal of the European commission, we propose to use a market mechanism, based on temporary utilisation licences. In order to allocate those licences, we propose and describe an iterated combinatorial auction mechanism where a percentage of licences would be reallocated each season. A secondary market would also be set up in order to reallocate slots during a season. Since a combinatorial auction involve a complex optimisation procedure, we describe how it can be made to work in the case of auctions.slots; airports; licence; auction; combinatorial

Consistent estimation of the filtering and marginal smoothing distributions in nonparametric hidden Markov models

In this paper, we consider the filtering and smoothing recursions in nonparametric finite state space hidden Markov models (HMMs) when the parameters of the model are unknown and replaced by estimators. We provide an explicit and time uniform control of the filtering and smoothing errors in total variation norm as a function of the parameter estimation errors. We prove that the risk for the filtering and smoothing errors may be uniformly upper bounded by the risk of the estimators. It has been proved very recently that statistical inference for finite state space nonparametric HMMs is possible. We study how the recent spectral methods developed in the parametric setting may be extended to the nonparametric framework and we give explicit upper bounds for the L2-risk of the nonparametric spectral estimators. When the observation space is compact, this provides explicit rates for the filtering and smoothing errors in total variation norm. The performance of the spectral method is assessed with simulated data for both the estimation of the (nonparametric) conditional distribution of the observations and the estimation of the marginal smoothing distributions.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1501.0478

Power of the Spacing test for Least-Angle Regression

Recent advances in Post-Selection Inference have shown that conditional testing is relevant and tractable in high-dimensions. In the Gaussian linear model, further works have derived unconditional test statistics such as the Kac-Rice Pivot for general penalized problems. In order to test the global null, a prominent offspring of this breakthrough is the spacing test that accounts the relative separation between the first two knots of the celebrated least-angle regression (LARS) algorithm. However, no results have been shown regarding the distribution of these test statistics under the alternative. For the first time, this paper addresses this important issue for the spacing test and shows that it is unconditionally unbiased. Furthermore, we provide the first extension of the spacing test to the frame of unknown noise variance. More precisely, we investigate the power of the spacing test for LARS and prove that it is unbiased: its power is always greater or equal to the significance level $\alpha$. In particular, we describe the power of this test under various scenarii: we prove that its rejection region is optimal when the predictors are orthogonal; as the level $\alpha$ goes to zero, we show that the probability of getting a true positive is much greater than $\alpha$; and we give a detailed description of its power in the case of two predictors. Moreover, we numerically investigate a comparison between the spacing test for LARS and the Pearson's chi-squared test (goodness of fit).Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Endogenous Technical Progress and the Emergence of Child Labor Laws

I develop a theory of technical progress that uncovers sufficient conditions for opposition to the adoption of child labor laws to disappear over time. The supply of child labor comes exclusively from unskilled parents, because of their inability to help their children benefit from formal education, while its demand originates from capitalists-the firms' owners. Because child labor crowds out adult employment, there are always social pressures to ban it. However, such pressures are met by capitalists' opposition. Capitalist oppose the adoption of a ban on child labor because such a ban reduces opportunities for earning a high return on capital. Technical progress, induced by skill accumulation, improves the earning prospects of firms hiring adult workers only, while it reduces those of firms hiring children only. As a result, more capitalists are drawn into the adult labor market, and industrial opposition to a ban on child labor eventually vanishes over time. Provided child labor exhibits skill-enhancing learning-by-doing, policy action to speed up the emergence of child labor laws should therefore focus on education reforms that raise the quality of education school-goers receive, and on political reforms that raise the cost of lobbying legislators against adopting a ban on child labor. However, in countries where child labor provides little or no opportunities for learning-by-doing, no law will emerge unless appropriately targeted poverty alleviation mechanisms are designed, in order to induce unskilled parents to allocate a positive fraction of child's time to schooling.Child labor, Learning-by-doing, Education, Technical progress, Lobbying cost, Voting equilibrium

The Impact of Government-Sponsored Training Programs on the Labor Market Transitions of Disadvantaged Men

Dans ce travail, nous cherchons à déterminer l'impact des mesures actives d'insertion sur les transitions des jeunes prestataires masculins de l'aide de dernier recours sur le marché du travail. La richesse des données à notre disposition nous permet de recréer de façon très détaillée l'historique de chaque prestataire sur une période relativement longue. Nous avons recours à un modèle de durée en temps continue pour estimer la densité des durées observées dans plus de sept états différents. L'endogénéité de la présence dans une mesure active est explicitement prise en compte. Nous analysons la sensibilité des paramètres estimés en comparant les résultats d'un modèle non-paramétrique standard avec ceux de plusieurs modèles paramétriques à deux ou trois facteurs de charge. Nos résultats montrent que les jeunes hommes peu scolarisés qui participent à des mesures actives destinées aux prestataires d'aide de dernier recours ont davantage de difficultés à s'intégrer au marché du travail que ceux qui ne participent pas à des telles mesures. En revanche, les mesures d'insertion offertes dans le cadre du programme d'assurance-emploi semblent donner de meilleurs résultats. De façon générale, la durée dans chacun des sept états considérés est sensible aux variables considérées dans l'analyse, soient les prestations d'aide de dernier recours, le salaire minimum, et le taux de chômage. The analysis focuses on the impact of government-sponsored training programs aimed at disadvantaged male youths on their labour market transitions. The richness of the data at our disposal allows us to recreate very detailed individual histories over a relatively long period. We use a continuous time duration model to estimate the density of duration times in as many as seven states, controlling for the endogeneity of an individual's training status. We investigate the sensitivity of the parameter estimates by comparing a typical non-parametric specification with a series of parametric two-factor loading models, as well as a parametric three-factor loading model. Our results show that young, poorly educated males who participate in welfare training programs do worse on the labour market than those who do not participate. On the other hand, participation in unemployment training programs provides them some benefits. In general, we find that duration times in any of the seven states considered are sensitive to variations in program parameters such as welfare benefits, policy variables such as the minimum wage rate, and in the economic environment as proxied by the unemployment rate.Modèle de durée multi-états multi-épisodes, hétérogénéité non-paramétrique, mesures active d'insertion, aide de dernier recours, multi-state multi-episods duration model, non-parametric heterogeneity, training programs, welfare

An Extension of the Concordet Criterion and Kemeny Orders

The usual Condorcet Criterion says that if an alternative is ranked ahead of all other alternatives by an absolute majority of voters, it should be declared the winner. The following partial extension of this criterion to other ranks is proposed: If an alternative is consistently ranked ahead of another alternative by an absolute majority of voters, it should be ahead in the final ranking. The term "consistently" refers to the absence of cycles in the majority relation involving these two alternatives. If there are cycles, this criterion gives partial orders that can be completed with the Kemeny rule. An algorithm to construct Kemeny orders is presented. It is based on a result saying that a complete Kemeny order over all alternatives can be obtained by splicing together Kemeny orders on the subsets of an admissible partition of the alternatives underlying the Extended Condorcet Criterion. Le critère usuel de Condorcet exige que, si une alternative est classée avant toutes les autres par une majorité de votants, elle devrait être déclarée vainqueur. Une extension partielle de ce critère aux autres rangs est proposée: Si une alternative est classée avant une autre de manière cohérente par une majorité de votants, elle devrait l'être dans le classement final. La cohérence réfère à l'absence de cycle dans la relation majoritaire impliquant ces deux alternatives. En cas de cycles, ce critère donne des ordres partiels, qui peuvent être complétés avec la règle de Kemeny. Un algorithme pour la construction des ordres de Kemeny est présenté. Il s'appuie sur un résultat affirmant qu'un ordre de Kemeny peut être obtenu en juxtaposant des ordres de Kemeny sur les sous-ensembles d'une partition des alternatives sous-jacente au critère de Condorcet généralisé.aggregation, Condorcet Criterion, Kemeny orders, algorithm

Maximum Likelihood Approach to Vote Aggregation with Variable Probabilities

Condorcet (1785) initiated the statistical approach to vote aggregation. Two centuries later, Young (1988) showed that a correct application of the maximum likelihood principle leads to the selection of rankings called Kemeny orders, which have the minimal total number of disagreements with those of the voters. The Condorcet-Kemeny-Yoiung approach is based on the assumption that the voters have the same probability of comparing correctly two alternatives and that this probability is the same for any pair of alternatives. We relax the second part of this assumption by letting the probability of comparing correctly two alternatives be increasing with the distance between two alternatives in the allegedly true ranking. This leads to a rule in which the majority in favor of one alternative against another one is given a larger weight the larger the distance between the two alternatives in the true ranking, i.e. the larger the probability that the voters compare them correctly. This rule is not Condorcet consistent. Thus, it may be different from the Kemeny rule. Yet, it is anonymous, neutral, and paretian. However, contrary to the Kemeny rule, it does not satisfy Young and Levenglick (1978)'s local independence of irrelevant alternatives. Condorcet also hinted that the Condorcet winner or the top alternative in the Condorcet ranking is not necessarily most likely to be the best. Young confirms that indeed with a constant probability close to 1/2, this alternative is the Borda winner while it is the alternative whose smallest majority is the largest when the probability is close to 1. We extend his analysis to the case of variable probabilities. Young's result implies that the Kemeny rule does not necessarily select the alternative most likely to be the best. A natural question that comes to mind is whether the rule obtained with variable probabilities does better than the Kemeny rule in this respect. It appears that this performance imporves with the rate at which the probability increases.Vote Aggregation, Kemeny Rule, Maximum Likelihood, Variable Probabilities

A Normative Approach to Measuring Classical Horizontal Inequity

This paper makes a new attack on the old problem of measuring horizontal inequity (HI). A local measure of HI is proposed, and aggregated into a global index. Whilst other approaches have captured the welfare gain which would come from eliminating HI revenue-neutrally, our global index provides a measure of the revenue gain per capita which would come from eliminating HI welfare-neutrally. When expressed as a fraction of mean post-tax income, the measure can be viewed as a negative component in the Blackorby and Donaldson (1984) index of tax progressivity, quantifying the loss of vertical performance arising from differences in the tax treatment of equals. Being money-metric, the measure can also be easily and intuitively interpreted. We propose non- parametric estimation procedures to obviate the important þidentification of equalsþ problem. To our knowledge, this provides the first consistent statistical solution to measuring classical horizontal inequity. The method is applied to the Canadian distributions of gross and net incomes in 1981 and 1990.

Marriage Market, Divorce Legislation and Household Labor Supply

This paper provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of the marriage market and divorce legislation on household labor supply. In our approach, the sex ratio on the marriage market and the rules governing divorce are examples of "distribution factors". The latter are defined as variables that affect the household members' bargaining position but neither preferences nor the joint budget set. We extend the collective labor supply model developed by Chiappori (JPE, 1992) to allow for distribution factors. We show that our model imposes new restrictions on the labor supply functions and eases the identification of individual preferences and the intra-household decision process. The model is estimated using PSID data for the year 1988. Our results do not reject the restrictions imposed by the model. Also, the sex ratio and divorce laws deemed favorable to women are found to impact the labor supply behavior and the decision process in the directions predicted by the theory and to have sizeable effects.Collective Model, Household Labor Supply, Marriage Market, Divorce Laws

International Competition between Public or Mixed Enterprises

We develop a model in which two firms from different countries compete on each other domestic market. Each firm is jointly owned by the residents and the government of its country. The extent of the government's stake in the public enterprise is endogenous and it determines the weight given to domestic consumers' surplus in the firm's payoff function. We show that the choice of each government's stake depends on a trade-off between allocative efficiency on the domestic market and profitability of foreign markets. We also highlight the fact that the government's stake in one country has an impact on firms' behavior in both countries.Regulation, public enterprises, duopoly