A Cheap Ticket to the Dance: Systematic Bias in College Basketball's Ratings Percentage Index

A contest model is constructed to examine the existence of conference bias in college basketball's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). Though a general RPI bias has been identified in previous literature, this is the first study to address whether the bias is random or systematic in nature. Within the theoretical model, the RPI is shown to be systematically biased against teams in high ability conferences, even when all teams play to expectation and can be transitively compared. Further, the bias can prevent the RPI from producing an ordinal mapping from revealed team ability level to the real number line. Given the longevity of the controversial RPI as the NCAA''s primary measure of team ability, these results may indicate that the NCAA is serving a demand for team heterogeneity in selecting for the NCAA Men''s Basketball Tournament.bias

Are we explaining the movement of hotel room rates correctly?

Demand function, inverse demand function or market equilibrium condition has been used to estimate the empirical models that explain the movement of hotel room rates. However, hotels generally face excess supply of rooms. This research paper develops a simple theoretical model to link hotel room rates to excess supply of hotel rooms. The annual data of Singapore from 1991 to 2017 is used to test this framework. Due to small sample size, with only 27 observations, the bounds testing approach to cointegration is applied on the annual data of hotel industry in Singapore because the obtained estimators are super-consistent. It is found that average hotel room rate and average hotel occupancy rate are cointegrated to confirm hotel room rates and excess supply of hotel rooms are inversely correlated. In order to avoid model mis-specification, major crises are captured by dummy variables which are treated as fixed regressors in the bounds testing approach to cointegration. The empirical and theoretical frameworks used in this study suggest that when hotel occupancy rate is used as an independent variable in modelling the determination of hotel room rates, a researcher is adopting excess supply framework developed in this paper. Furthermore, this framework teaches students in tourism a simplified way to explain the movement of hotel room rates, while still reminding students about the complexity of hotel industry

The dynamics of divorce, income, and female labor force participation in Singapore.

Singapore has experienced rising income and female labor force participation over the years. This growth, however, is also accompanied by increasing divorce rate. This paper utilizes Granger causality tests within a multivariate error correction framework to examine the short-run and long-run causal interactions among divorce, income and female labor force participation in Singapore. The long–run results suggest the presence of tradeoffs between income, female labor participation and the family unit, with the twin objectives of economic expansion and the move to draw more women into the labor market having a negative impact on the institution of marriage.causality, divorce, female labor force participation, income, Singapore

Modified TAROT for cross-selling personal financial products

The Top Application characteristics Remainder Offer characteristics Tree (TAROT) was first introduced in 2007. This is a modified Classification and Regression Trees (CART) used to help decide which question(s) to ask potential applicants to customise an offer of a personal financial product so that it would have a high probability of take up. In this piece of work the authors are presenting, they have further modified the TAROT to cross TAROT, using its properties and modeling steps to deal with the issue of cross-selling. Since the bank already has ready customers, it would be ideal to cross-sell the financial products seeing that one can ask one (or more) further question(s) based on the initial offer to identify and customise another financial product to offer

The efficiency of the hotel industry in Singapore

Existing literature related to evaluating the efficiency of the hotel industry, generally, uses different types of radial Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compare the relative efficiency of different hotels in a location. This research note has adopted a different approach by treating years as decision making units (DMUs). This will allow policymakers to evaluate the relative efficiency of a hotel industry as a whole over a specified time period so that the effects of the occurrence of events on the efficiency of hotel industry can be evaluated. This study focuses on the efficiency of hotel industry in Singapore from 1995 to 2010. The analysis is carried out using the non-radial DEA called the Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) to identify the efficient years. Then the efficient DMUs are ranked with the SBM model of super-efficiency

SME innovation in the Malaysian manufacturing sector

This paper examines the determinants of innovation amongst small and medium enterprises in the Malaysian manufacturing sector using firm-level data. For small-sized firms, younger firms are more likely to innovate compared to older firms. However, for medium-sized and large-sized firms, older firms are more likely to innovate. The extent of foreign ownership is not an important determinant of innovation. Small-sized firms with more employees are more likely to innovate. Medium-sized firms that produce for domestic market tend to be more innovative. In terms of ownership structure, medium-sized firms that are public limited companies are less likely to innovate. The relationship between technological characteristics of industry and firms’ likelihood to innovate appear to be complex. Higher market concentration is associated with higher probability to innovate for medium-sized firms

[Photograph 2012.201.B1006.0293]

Photograph used for a newspaper owned by the Oklahoma Publishing Company. Caption: "Sequoyah State Park between Wagoner and Tahlequah, Okla.

FORECASTING PERFORMANCE OF COINTEGRATING REGRESSION UNDER ALTERNATIVE ESTIMATION METHODS : AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Foreign direct investment, pollution and economic growth: evidence from Malaysia

The bounds test developed by Pesaran et al. (2001) is applied to examine the existence of a long-run relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, pollution and output of Malaysia. Granger causality tests are also utilized to test for the presence of the short-run and long-run causal relationship between these variables. Both FDI inflows and pollution have short-run causal relationship on output. Output only has long-run causal relationship on FDI inflows.