ESSAYS IN CROSS-COUNTRY CONSUMPTION RISK SHARING

This dissertation concerns cross-country consumption risk sharing in a long-run perspective. Financial integration, empirically measured by cross-country holdings of assets and liabilities, has increased dramatically in the past two decades. But what can explain the lack of cross-country risk sharing documented in the literature? Chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation address this question. In Chapter 2, we set up a model to illustrate the mechanical difference between a bond economy and an insurance economy. We show that a bond economy can intertemporally smooth consumption in face of transitory output shocks, but not for permanent output shocks; an insurance economy is essential for risk sharing on permanent shocks. We therefore show that when both transitory and permanent output shocks exist, transitory shocks only create "noise" if the focus of interest is on identifying risk sharing in the long run. In Chapter 3, we specify an empirical nonstationary panel regression model to test long-run consumption risk sharing across a sample of OECD and emerging market countries. This is in contrast to tests in the literature which are mainly about risks at business cycle frequency. We argue that these existing tests neglected the permanent elements of risks that are of interest and that their model specifications were not rich enough to accommodate heterogeneous short-run dynamics. Since our methodology focuses on identifying cointegrating relationships while allowing for arbitrary short-run dynamics, we can obtain a consistent estimate of long-run risk sharing while disregarding any short-run nuisance factors. Our results show that, for the period of 1950-2008, the level of long-run risk sharing in OECD countries is similar to that in emerging market countries. However, during the financial integration episode of the past two decades, long-run risk sharing in OECD countries increased more than in emerging market countries. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between various measures of financial integration and cross-country risk sharing, but only find weak evidence of such linkages

Teacher Incentive Pay Programs in the United States: Union Influence and District Characteristics

This study examined the characteristics of teacher incentive pay programs in the United States. Using the 2007–08 SASS data set, it found an inverse relationship between union influence and districts’ incentive pay offerings. Large and ethnically diverse districts in urban areas that did not meet the requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress as defined under the No Child Left Behind Act are more likely to offer a larger number of economic incentives. Although rural districts are likely to reward teachers in hard-to-staff schools, they are not more likely to reward teachers who are certified by the National Board or who teach in the subject areas of shortage, nor are they more likely to offer multiple financial incentives

Unsupervised Anomaly Detection via Variational Auto-Encoder for Seasonal KPIs in Web Applications

To ensure undisrupted business, large Internet companies need to closely monitor various KPIs (e.g., Page Views, number of online users, and number of orders) of its Web applications, to accurately detect anomalies and trigger timely troubleshooting/mitigation. However, anomaly detection for these seasonal KPIs with various patterns and data quality has been a great challenge, especially without labels. In this paper, we proposed Donut, an unsupervised anomaly detection algorithm based on VAE. Thanks to a few of our key techniques, Donut greatly outperforms a state-of-arts supervised ensemble approach and a baseline VAE approach, and its best F-scores range from 0.75 to 0.9 for the studied KPIs from a top global Internet company. We come up with a novel KDE interpretation of reconstruction for Donut, making it the first VAE-based anomaly detection algorithm with solid theoretical explanation.Comment: 12 pages (including references), 17 figures, submitted to WWW 2018: The 2018 Web Conference, April 23--27, 2018, Lyon, France. The contents discarded from the conference version due to the 9-page limitation are also included in this versio

Cross-Country Consumption Risk Sharing, a Long-Run Perspective

This paper estimates an empirical nonstationary panel regression model that tests long-run consumption risk sharing across a sample of OECD and emerging market (EM) countries. This is in contrast to the existing literature on consumption risk sharing, which is mainly about risks at business cycle frequency. Since our methodology focuses on identifying cointegrating relationships while allowing for arbitrary short-run dynamics, we can obtain a consistent estimate of long-run risk sharing while disregarding any short-run nuisance factors. Our results show that long-run risk sharing in OECD countries increased more than that in EM countries during the past two decades.Economic models;Emerging markets;Financial risk;OECD;risk sharing, equation, time series, cointegration, statistic, correlation, statistics, covariance, martingale, econometrics, consistent estimate, correlations, finite sample, sample selection, moral hazard, prediction, asymptotic distribution, time series analysis, simulation results, orthogonality, standard errors, random walk, random coefficient, central limit theorem, survey, estimation procedure, equation system, samples, instrumental variables, monte carlo simulation, arbitrage, economic risks, outlier, data analysis, integral, factor analysis, explanatory power, sampling, maximum likelihood method, sample size, predictions, random variables, vector autoregression, statistical inference, moral hazards, insurance contracts, monte carlo simulations, consistent estimator, linear regression, equations, simulation model

Impacton Intra-European Trade Agreements, 1990-2005

The paper provides quantitative estimates of the impact of the European trade agreements on trade flows. It applies both static and dynamic panel estimation techniques. The results are useful to policymakers because new intra-European trade agreements are being negotiated. In the absence of a further expansion of the European Union, estimates of alternative policies may help to clarify the policy debate. The paper also illustrates that the performance of individual countries under the trade agreements can be explained in terms of their macroeconomic environment. The conclusions are likely to be relevant to the western Balkan countries and Ukraine.Bilateral trade;Trade relations;Customs policy;Economic models;trade agreements, customs, customs union, trade agreement, rules of origin, free trade, trade preferences, trade flows, free trade agreement, import duties, trade performance, world trade, trade liberalization, free trade agreements, mfn tariffs, trade policy review, trading partners, trade diversion, regional trade, trade policies, impact of trade, world trade organization, bilateral agreements, bilateral trade agreements, customs agreement, preferential trade, bilateral trade flows, restrictive rules of origin, trading arrangements, unilateral trade, trade area, external trade, average tariff, free trade area, preferential trading arrangements, partner country, multilateral trade, trade integration, regional trade agreements, preferential trading, competitive price, high tariffs, international trade, multilateral trade negotiations, export performance, import tariffs, bilateral trade agreement, trade arrangements, preferential trade agreements, trade creation, partner countries, preferential trade agreement, external tariff, trade embargo, country of origin, trade negotiations, customs union agreements, regional integration, unilateral trade liberalization, world trading system, customs modernization, exchange rate movements, customs modernization handbook, multilateral trade liberalization, bilateral free trade, most-favored-nation, duty-free treatment, nonrestrictive rules, customs administration, tariff barriers, bilateral cumulation, trade barriers, nontariff barriers, competition policies, trading system, trade partners, world economy, barriers to entry, monetary unions, preferential access, elasticity of substitution, trade policy options, monetary union, import side, diverted trade, bilateral agreement, trading partner, exchange rate regime, regional trade arrangements, per capita income, non-tariff barriers, agricultural trade, trade in services, bilateral free trade agreement, constant elasticity of substitution, transition countries, member country, full trade liberalization, competition policy, domestic market, common external tariff, duty-free access, customs administrations, trade patterns, liberal rules

Professional Development and Student Achievement: International Evidence from the TIMSS Data

Abstract This comparative study used the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data sets and examined the relationship between professional development and student achievement. It found that although the national levels of access for students at the fourth and eighth grade levels to teachers who participated in professional learning in the United States were higher than the other countries, one third to one half of the fourth grades were taught by teachers who had no professional learning focusing on math instruction or curriculum. In addition, teachers' participation in professional development was positively associated with higher student math achievement. This cross-national study provided empirical evidence highlighting the importance of investing in teacher learning for improving national educational quality

Nanogel-Incorporated Injectable Hydrogel for Synergistic Therapy Based on Sequential Local Delivery of Combretastatin-A4 Phosphate (CA4P) and Doxorubicin (DOX)

Drug combination therapies employing dual-drug delivery systems offer an effective approach to reduce disadvantages of single-drug therapy, such as high dose and easy generation of drug resistance. Herein, a dual-drug delivery system based on nanogel-incorporated injectable hydrogel (NHG) was designed for sequential local delivery of combretastatin-A4 phosphate (CA4P) and doxorubicin (DOX) for antiangiogenesis and anticancer combination therapy. The injectable hydrogel was prepared for loading and quick release of hydrophilic drug CA4P, while the pH and redox stimuli-responsive nanohydrogels were incorporated into the injectable hydrogel by pH-responsive boronate ester bond for sustained long-term DOX delivery. The dual-drug-loaded NHG system released CA4P and DOX sequentially and exhibited high inhibitory activities on the cancer cell proliferation in vitro. It displayed superior therapeutic efficacy in vivo with only one single injection. Immunohistochemistry analyses suggested a synergistic therapeutic effect through tumor vascular collapse caused by CA4P and tumor cell apoptosis induced by DOX. The combination therapy of antiangiogenic and cytotoxic drugs using NHG delivery system offers a promising approach for improved cancer therapeutic efficacy. The nanogel-embedded injectable hydrogel can be employed as a universal drug carrier for local dual-drug delivery with sequential release behaviors by simple injection