Technological Inefficiency and the Skewness of the Error Component in Stochastic Frontier Analysis

This paper concentrates on negatively skewed one-sided distributions as an explanation of the occurence of positive (negative) skewness in the case of stochastic production (cost) frontier analysis. It takes as example the binomial distribution that can have negative or positive skew and derives the method-of-moments estimators

Interest and Hazard Rates of Russian Saving Banks

The number of (registered) commercial banks in Russia increased at a fast pace after the 1988 banking reform. Many of these banks lacked supervision and operated with dangerously low funding capital. In this paper we investigate the determinants of the hazard rates of banks active on the Moscovian deposits market during the 1994-97 period. We find that market share and duration have had a negative effect on the hazard rate, while the interest rate offered has had a positive effect

The Evolution of the Russian Saving Bank Sector During the Transition Era

Following the 1988 banking reform in Russia there was an enormous increase in the number of (registered) commercial banks. The Russian savings bank sector went through a period of shakeout after the August 1995 interbank crisis. Large banks were able to expand their market shares in the deposits market as a result of scale advantages and advertising. Entrants unsuccessfully sought to gain market share by having high deposit rates

Nearly Unbiased Estimation in Dynamic Panel Data Models with Exogenous Variables

This paper introduces a new estimator for the fixed effects dynamic panel data model with exogenous variables. This estimator does not share some of the drawbacks of recently developed IV and GMM estimators and has a good performance even in small samples. The nearly unbiased estimator is derived as a bias correction of the within estimator (least squares dummy variable estimator). The estimator is applied to a model of unemployment dynamics at the U.S. state level for the 1991-2000 period

Level sets of functions and symmetry sets of smooth surface sections

We prove that the level sets of a real C^s function of two variables near a non-degenerate critical point are of class C^[s/2] and apply this to the study of planar sections of surfaces close to the singular section by the tangent plane at hyperbolic points or elliptic points, and in particular at umbilic points. We also analyse the cases coming from degenerate critical points, corresponding to elliptic cusps of Gauss on a surface, where the differentiability is now reduced to C^[s/4]. However in all our applications to symmetry sets of families of plane curves, we assume the C^infty smoothness.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, 6 grouped figures. The final version will appear in Mathematics of Surfaces. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2005

The Lag Structure of the Impact of Business Ownership on Economic Performance in OECD Countries

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the number of business owners on three measures of economic performance, viz. employment growth, GDP growth and labor productivity growth. Particular attention is devoted to the lag structure. The analysis is performed at the country level for 21 OECD countries. Our results confirm earlier evidence on three stages in the impact of entry on economic performance: an initial direct positive effect, followed by a negative effect due to exiting capacities and finally a stage of positive supply-side effects. The net effect is positive for employment and GDP growth. Changes in the number of business owners have no effect on labor productivity

Overoptimism among Founders: The Role of Information and Motivation

This study empirically investigates factors that influence overoptimism across nascent entrepreneurs. We distinguish between two main groups of determinants (information, motivation) and three types of overoptimism (income, psychological burden, leisure time). Findings indicate that entrepreneurs who have relevant business information are more realistic and that entrepreneurs with a high level of general knowledge, acquired through education or previous (unrelated) entrepreneurial experience, are more overoptimistic. External advice and business planning do not appear to limit subsequent overoptimism. Entrepreneurs are less overoptimistic about the pecuniary or non-pecuniary benefits of self-employment when these benefits are closely related to the initial motivation for starting up the business

The Role of Extractives On Short-Term Creep In Compression Parallel To The Grain of Pai Wood (Afzelia Africana Smith)

The creep behavior of extracted and unextracted blocks of Pai wood (Afzelia africana Smith) was examined in compression parallel to grain to determine the influence of both within-lumen and wall-resident extractives. It was concluded that the lumen-located extractive fractions have no significant effect on short-term creep, while the removal of wall-resident components permitted significant and accelerated creep development. However, as the cell walls of extracted wood were more reactive to moisture, the results of creep tests of this material must be interpreted with caution. It is proposed that the mechanism of influence on compressive creep is one of extractives stiffening the cell walls

Unintegrated parton distributions

We describe how to calculate the parton distributions fa(x,kt2,μ2), unintegrated over the parton transverse momentum kt, from auxiliary functions ha(x,kt2), which satisfy single-scale evolution equations. The formalism embodies both DGLAP and BFKL contributions, and accounts for the angular ordering which comes from coherence effects in gluon emission. We check that the unintegrated distributions give the measured values of the deep inelastic structure function F2(x,Q2)

Highly selective hydrogenation of furfural over supported Pt nanoparticles under mild conditions

The selective liquid phase hydrogenation of furfural to furfuryl alcohol over Pt nanoparticles supported on SiO₂, ZnO, γ-Al2O₃, CeO₂ is reported under extremely mild conditions. Ambient hydrogen pressure, and temperatures as low as 50 °C are shown sufficient to drive furfural hydrogenation with high conversion and >99% selectivity to furfuryl alcohol. Strong support and solvent dependencies are observed, with methanol and n-butanol proving excellent solvents for promoting high furfuryl alcohol yields over uniformly dispersed 4 nm Pt nanoparticles over MgO, CeO₂ and γ-Al₂O₃. In contrast, non-polar solvents conferred poor furfural conversion, while ethanol favored acetal by-product formation. Furfural selective hydrogenation can be tuned through controlling the oxide support, reaction solvent and temperature