Businessmen's Expectations Are Neither Rational nor Adaptive

A framework which allows for the joint testing of the adaptive and rational expectations hypotheses is presented. We assume joint normality of expectations, realizations and variables in the information set, allowing for parsimonious interpretation of the data; conditional first moments are linear in the conditioning variables, and we can easily recover regression coefficients from them and test simple hypotheses by imposing zero restrictions on these coefficients. The nature of the data, which are responses to business surveys and are all categorical, requires simulation techniques to obtain full information maximum likelihood estimates. We use a latent variable model which allows for the construction of a simple likelihood function. However, this likelihood contains multi-(four)dimensional integrals, requiring simulators to evaluate. Simulated maximum-likelihood estimation is carried out using the Geweke-Hajivassilou-Keane (GHK) method, which is consistent and has low variance. The latter is crucial when maximizing the log-likelihood directly. Identification of the parameters is achieved by placing restrictions on the response thresholds and/or the variances. We find that we can reject both hypotheses. --

Le développement de l’agriculture, la croissance de la population et l’environnement

Peu de sujets suscitent autant d’intérêt et d’inquiétude dans l’économie contemporaine que ceux reliés à l’environnement. Plusieurs problèmes environnementaux à long terme sont de nature intergénérationnelle, c’est-à-dire qu’ils affectent principalement les générations futures; ils sont le résultat de l’utilisation de la technologie agricole moderne, d’une extension de l’agriculture dans des secteurs fragiles sur le plan environnemental dans le but d’augmenter la production alimentaire, de la pollution due à l’urbanisation et à l’industrialisation rapide, ou d’une exploitation trop précipitée de l’énergie non renouvelable et d’autres ressources naturelles. Le but de cet essai est d’explorer les liens entre la croissance de la population, le développement agricole et la qualité de l’environnement.Le développement agricole est essentiel au maintien d’une population mondiale croissante. Dans le « meilleur scénario », on s’attend à ce que la croissance de la population se fasse à un taux décroissant au cours des cinq prochaines générations, puis se stabilise. Mais pour que cette stabilité se réalise, il faut que la fécondité humaine ne réponde pas positivement aux changements environnementaux associés au développement agricole. Dans cet essai, je propose des raisons qui permettent de supposer que, dans des circonstances environnementales relativement bonnes, et à de hauts niveaux de subsistance, la fécondité répondra positivement à la détérioration de l’environnement et que les perspectives de stabilisation de la population à un niveau favorable de qualité environnementale ne sont pas bonnes en l’absence d’intervention sociale. Je conclus de plus que les chances d’une intervention stabilisatrice sont faibles.Few issues excite as much interest and concern in contemporary economics as those related to environment. Many long term environmental problems are intergenerational, in the sense that they affect primarily future generations, and derive from the use of modern agricultural technology or extension of agriculture into environmentally fragile areas to augment food supplies, as well as from pollution due to rapid urbanization and industrialization or from too rapid exploitation of exhaustible energy and other natural resources. The purpose of this essay is to explore the connections among population growth, agricultural development, and the quality of environment.Agricultural development is essential to support a growing level of world population at tolerable levels. Growth in population is expected to occur at a diminishing rate over the next five generations before it stabilizes in the "best-case" scenario. But such stability requires that human fertility not respond positively to environmental changes associated with agricultural development. In this essay, I suggest reasons to suppose that, under relatively good environmental circumstances and relatively high levels of subsistence, fertility will in fact respond positively to environmental deterioration and that, therefore, the prospects for stabilization of population at such favourable levels of environmental quality are not good in the absence of social intervention. I further conclude that the likelihood of stabilizing intervention is not great

Le développement de l’agriculture, la croissance de la population et l’environnement

Few issues excite as much interest and concern in contemporary economics as those related to environment. Many long term environmental problems are intergenerational, in the sense that they affect primarily future generations, and derive from the use of modern agricultural technology or extension of agriculture into environmentally fragile areas to augment food supplies, as well as from pollution due to rapid urbanization and industrialization or from too rapid exploitation of exhaustible energy and other natural resources. The purpose of this essay is to explore the connections among population growth, agricultural development, and the quality of environment. Peu de sujets suscitent autant d’intérêt et d’inquiétude dans l’économie contemporaine que ceux reliés à l’environnement. Plusieurs problèmes environnementaux à long terme sont de nature intergénérationnelle, c’est-à-dire qu’ils affectent principalement les générations futures; ils sont le résultat de l’utilisation de la technologie agricole moderne, d’une extension de l’agriculture dans des secteurs fragiles sur le plan environnemental dans le but d’augmenter la production alimentaire, de la pollution due à l’urbanisation et à l’industrialisation rapide, ou d’une exploitation trop précipitée de l’énergie non renouvelable et d’autres ressources naturelles. Le but de cet essai est d’explorer les liens entre la croissance de la population, le développement agricole et la qualité de l’environnement.

Time Series Analysis

We provide a concise overview of time series analysis in the time and frequency domains, with lots of references for further reading.time series analysis, time domain, frequency domain, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

A Bequest-Constrained Economy: Welfare Analysis

Bequest constraints have played a major role in discussions of debt neutrality but their welfare implications were not sufficiently dealt with in the literature. In this paper we focus on the welfare implications of bequest constraints. We found that when institutional constraints to the transfer of resources from children to their parents exists the welfare of the parents' generation may be improved by an old age security scheme. Such a scheme is justified not by income redistribution consideration, as is typically the case, but rather on pure efficiency grounds. Due to its intergenerational transfer role the social security scheme is Pareto-improving with altruistic parents if, in addition, the real income effect which tends to raise children consumption is relatively strong.