Simultaneous Estimation of Hedonic Equations with Unbalanced Data

Hedonic non-market valuation often requires estimating housing and labor market regressions. The authors show how to accommodate unbalanced data in hedonic regressions. In addition to efficiency gains, the method allows consistent estimation of confidence intervals for amenity values. The paper illustrates by estimating the implicit price of a temperature increase in urban Brazil

Global poverty estimates: Present and future

We review the recent empirical literature on global poverty, focusing on key methodological aspects. These include the choice of welfare indicator, poverty line and purchasing power parity exchange rates, equivalence scales, data sources, and estimation methods. We also discuss the importance of the intra-household resource allocation process in determining within-household inequalities and potentially influencing poverty estimates. Based on a sensitivity analysis of global poverty estimates to different methodological approaches, we show that existing figures vary markedly with the choice of data source for mean income or consumption used to scale relative distributions; and with the statistical method used to estimate income distributions from tabulated data.global poverty, household surveys, national accounts, tabulated data.

The Assessment of Poverty and Inequality through Parametric Estimation of Lorenz Curves: An Evaluation

The estimation of poverty and inequality often requires the use of grouped data as complete household surveys are neither always available to researchers nor easy to analyze. This study assesses the performance of two functional forms for the Lorenz curve proposed by Kakwani (1980) and Villasenor and Arnold (1989). The methods are implemented using the computational tool POVCAL, developed and distributed by the World Bank. To identify biases associated with this method of estimating the two Lorenz curve functional forms, the authors analyze unit data from several household surveys and a wide range of theoretical distributions. They find that poverty and inequality is better estimated when the data is generated from unimodal distributions than when it is drawn from multimodal distributions. For unimodal distributions, the biases in the estimation of poverty measures are rarely larger than one percentage point. Inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) is well estimated in most cases considered. Neither of the two Lorenz curve estimation methods provides consistently superior performance, and performance does not always improve with the number of data points analyzed

On Social Networks and Social Protest: Understanding the Organizational Embeddedness of Large-Scale Protest Events

How do large-scale protest events differ across nation-states? Do social networks play different roles in different places and, if so, how do they matter? This paper compares the roles that social networks play in mobilizing participants in large-scale domestic protest. Comparing two relatively recent events in the United States and France, I find that different types of social ties did not play the same role in each country. Although personal and organizational ties played almost equal roles in mobilizing participants at the protest-event during the Republican National Convention in 2004, organizational ties played a much more significant role in mobilizing participants to protest the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE) in France in 2006. In addition, participants in these two protest events reported being involved in dissimilar types of organizations at varying levels, which may help to explain the differential outcomes of these two protests

Why Do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output per Worker than Others? Some Further Results

To explain differences in output per worker across countries, the authors test for the workings of a learning-by-doing hypothesis and the hypothesis that the effectiveness of human capital depends on the laws and institutions that promote workplace practices that allow skills to develop. The quality of laws and institutions in the workplace is measured by an index of economic security (ESI). Pikoulakis and Minoiu find that ESI is a good proxy for human capital whilst educational attainment is not. They also find that countries with high ESI use more effectively the skills of the workforce and are better at exploiting profitable opportunities in capital markets

Real Income Stagnation of Countries, 1960-2001

We examine the phenomenon of real-income stagnation in a large cross-section of countries during the last four decades. Stagnation is defined as negligible or negative growth extending over a number of years. We find that stagnation has affected more than three fifths of countries (103 out of 168). Stagnating countries were more likely to have been poor, in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa, conflict ridden and dependent on primary commodity exports. Stagnation is recurrent: countries that were stagnators in the 1960s had a likelihood of 75 percent of having been stagnators in the 1990s.real income stagnation, patterns of economic growth

The Impact of Aid on the Economic Growth of Developing Countries (LDCs) in Sub-Saharan Africa

Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Sub-Saharan African have been recipients of official development assistance for more than 5 decades; however they are still characterized by chronic problems of poverty, low living standards and weak economic growth. The hot question is: Is aid effective in promoting economic growth? Thus, this paper investigates the impact of aid on the economic growth of 12 least developed countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over a period of 20 years. I take a fixed effects instrumental variable approach and the results imply that aid has a statistically insignificant negative impact on economic growth. I therefore conclude that aid is ineffective in promoting growth, perhaps due to misallocation of aid or inefficient use

Financial Contagion and Systemic Risk: From Theory to Applicable Macroeconomic Model

This draft working paper is to summarize theoretical contributions in the field of measuring systemic risk and contagion of financial systems. Broad theoretical framework is analyzed and empiric approach to a macroeconomic model of global banking system systemic risk and contagion is offered. The model is to use BIS locational statistics as well as national consolidated balance sheets of banking systems to provide some insight into the vulnerability of modern banking system. As to theoretical contributions, three branches of literature are analyzed: correlation-based measures, network-based measures and various systemic risk measures

Intergenerational Influences of Wealth in Mexico

Using the 2006 Mexican Social Mobility Survey, this research evaluates the influence of parental wealth on several outcomes of adult children, including educational attainment, consumption level, asset holdings, home ownership, and value of residence. Two mechanisms of parental influence on economic wellbeing are explored: an indirect effect mediated by parental investment in human capital, and the direct transfer of resources. Three main findings emerge from the analysis. First, parental wealth is a strong determinant of educational attainment, net of the standard indicators of advantage regularly used in stratification research, and the influence of wealth is stronger among the most disadvantaged children (those with low cultural capital, and residing in non-urban areas). Second, the mechanism of parental influence on adult children's economic wellbeing differs depending on the outcome: In the case of consumption level, the influence is largely indirect, mediated by parental investment in offspring's human capital, while the opposite is true for children's asset holdings, where a direct transfer of resources predominates. Third, while access to homeownership is only weakly stratified by parent's and children's resources, the value of the acquired home is significantly affected by parental wealth. These patterns of influence are similar to those found in Chile (Spilerman and Torche 2004, Torche and Spilerman 2006) and they highlight the critical impact of parental wealth in less developed countries

Inequality, Happiness and Relative Concerns: What Actually is their Relationship?

This paper studies information transmission between multiple agents with different preferences and a welfare maximizing decision maker who chooses the quality or quantity of a public good (e.g. provision of public health service; carbon emissions policy; pace of lectures in a classroom) that is consumed by all of them. Communication in such circumstances su¤ers from the agents. incentive to "exaggerate" their preferences relative to the average of the other agents, since the decision maker's reaction to each agent's message is weaker than in one-to-one communication. As the number of agents becomes larger the quality of information transmission diminishes. The use of binary messages (e.g. "yes" or "no") is shown to be a robust mode of communication when the main source of informational distortion is exaggeration.: Communication, Public Good Provision, Cheap Talk, Committee, Non-binding Referendum