The distribution of expenditure in Spain, 1973-74 to 1980-81

This paper examines how far we can go in establishing normative conclusions with regard to the evolution of inequality over time, making use of statistical methods which do not need either too specific assumptions about individual preferences, or their recovery by means of complex and expensive econometric methods. The decomposition of the change in money inequality into a real and a price effect occupies the center of the analysis. We have used statistical Laspeyres type price indices which are household specific, and a parametrization which captures the weight one is prepared to give to household size in the definition of equivalent expenditure per person. The central finding is that the improvement in real inequality in Spain from 1973-74 to 1980-81 is always greater than the improvement in money inequality. Changes in relative prices have been less damaging to the poor than to the rich, and have had a uniform impact across groups from different partitions. The explanatory power of overall inequality provided by different characteristics is studied by means of statistical constructs independent of the equivalence scale used

Bayesian inference and prediction for the GI/M/1 queueing system

This article undertake Bayesian inference and prediction for GI/M/1 queueing systems. A semiparametric model based on mixtures of Erlang distributions is considered to model the general interarrival time distribution. Given arrival and service data, a Bayesian procedure based on birth-death Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods is proposed. An estimation of the system parameters and predictive distributions of measures such as the stationary system size and waiting time is give

Non-monotoniticies and the all-pay auction tie-breaking rule

Discontinuous games, such as auctions, may require special tie-breaking rules to guarantee equilibrium existence. The best results available ensure equilibrium existence only in mixed strategy with endogenously defined tie-breaking rules and communication of private information. We show that an all-pay auction tie-breaking rule is sufficient for the existence of pure strategy equilibrium in a class of auctions. The rule is explicitly defined and does not require communication of private information. We also characterize when special tie-breaking rules are really needed

Forecasting inflation in the euro area using monthly time series models and quarterly econometric models

Economic agents and financial authorities require frequent updates to a path of accurate inflation forecasts and need forecasts to include an explanation of the factors by which they are determined. This paper studies how to approach this need, developing a method for analysing inflation in the euro area, measured according to HICP. Time series models using the most recent information on prices and an important functional and geographically disaggregation can provide monthly forecasts which are reasonably accurate, but they do not provide an explanation of the factors by which the forecast is determined. In this respect, it is important to enlarge the data set used considering explanatory variables and build congruent econometric models including variables which, following previous works by D. Hendry, capture disequilibria on different markets, goods and services, labour, monetary and international. The final result of this work shows that combining the forecasts from a monthly time series vector model, constructed on price subindexes from a disaggregation of the HICP by countries and sectors, with the forecasts derived from a quarterly econometric vector model on aggregate inflation and other economic variables, very accurate forecasts are obtained. Both vector models are specified including empirical cointegration restrictions, which in the first case capture the constrains necessary present between the trends of the price subindexes and in the second approximate the long-run restrictions postulated by economic theory

A bayesian analysis of beta testing

In this article, we define a model for fault detection during the beta testing phase of a software design project. Given sampled data, we illustrate how to estimate the failure rate and the number of faults in the software using Bayesian statistical methods with various different prior distributions. Secondly, given a suitable cost function, we also show how to optimise the duration of a further test period for each one of the prior distribution structures considered

On non representable preferences

In this note, we prove that for every non-separable metric space there is a continuous preference ordering which is non respresentable by an utility function

Human capital and other determinants in the life cycle of the price of a slave: The case of spanish america in the eighteenth century

This paper analizes the determinants of the price life cicle of a slave, dealing particularly with the impact of the human capital, both with respect to skills and health. The paper details the source of the sample -including more than two thousand Spanish American Slaves of the 18th Century-and discusses its reliability, moving on to a descriptive analysis in the geographic and historical context. Later on it looks at the factors influencing price in several types of economic activity, and ends by comparing the conclusions with those obtained in other studies

Bayesian econometrics:conjugate analysis and rejection sampling using mathematica

Mathematica is a powerful "system for doing mathematics by computer" which runs on personal computers (Macs and MS-DOS machines), workstations and mainframes. Here we show how Bayesian methods can be implemented in Mathematica. One of the drawbacks of Bayesian techniques is that they are computation-intensive, and every computation is a little different. Since Mathematica is so flexible, it can easily be adapted to solving a number of different Bayesian estimation problems. We illustrate the use of Mathematica functions (i) in a traditional conjugate analysis of the linear regression model and (ii) in a completely nonstandard model -where rejection sampling is used to sample from the posterior

Capital utilization: maintenance costs and the business cycle

In this paper we analyze the role played by capacity utilization and maintenance costs in the propagation of aggregate fluctuations. To this purpose we use an extension of the general equilibrium stochastic growth model that incorporates a depreciation technology depending both upon capital utilization (depreciation in use assumption) and maintenance costs. In addition, we argue that the maintenance activity must be countercyclical, because it is cheaper for the firm to repair and maintain machines when they are stopped than when machines are being employed. We show that the propagation mechanism associated to our technology assumption is quantitatively important: the countercyclicality of maintenance costs contributes significantly to magnify and propagate aggregate fluctuations