Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Dynamics and Heterogeneity in the Cyclicality of Real Wages

Neither the issue of how local and aggregate labor markets interact over time-nor the issue of how heterogeneity by education, race, and other factors interacts with these spatial dynamics-has previously been explored in the literature on the cyclicality of real wages. This study investigates how real wages respond to local and aggregate unemployment rates over time, and explores possible heterogeneities in the responses. Results, based upon data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, indicate that real wages move procyclically with both aggregate and local markets, but that the response to local changes occurs with a lag; that rates of return to education are procyclical overall for aggregate labor markets, but tend to be countercyclical for blacks; and that wages of union, manufacturing, blue-collar, and black workers tend to be less procyclical, even countercyclical for black college graduates. Overall, we find substantial spatial dynamics and heterogeneity in the cyclicality of real wages.
Chinese Graduate Students and U.S. Scientific Productivity

Abstract The migration of young Chinese scientists to undertake graduate studies in U.S. universities is arguably one of the most important recent episodes of skilled migration. Using a new data set covering around 16,000 Ph.D. graduates in 161 U.S. chemistry departments, we show that Chinese students have a scientific output during their thesis that is significantly higher than other students. In fact, conditional on acceptance into the same programs, Chinese students perform about as well as the awardees of the NSF doctoral fellowship program. These results shed new light on the benefits of student migration on scientific productivity of destination countries.
Why Cooperate? Public Goods, Economic Power, and the Montreal Protocol

This paper develops a correlated probit model to describe dichotomous choices that may contain a public-goods component or some other forms of interdependency. The key contribution of the paper is to formulate tests for interdependent behavior among agents. In particular, we examine the decisions by nations whether or not to ratify the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Specifically, we reject free riding as a motive for not ratifying the Protocol, and we find little evidence that individual nations were influenced by the behavior of their largest trading partners. Hence, the data suggest that, with respect to the Montreal Protocol, most nations acted without regard for the actions of other nations.
Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice

This invention relates to useful protective compositions and a method for protecting aluminum and aluminum alloy products against water staining. The method involves applying a continuous film of a protective composition to the surface of the aluminum product. The protective compositions useful for the invention are blends or reaction products of a polybasic acid and a partial ester of a polyol.
Testing for Liquidity Constraints in Euler Equations with Complementary Data Sources

Previous tests for liquidity constraints using consumption Euler equations have frequently split the sample on the basis of wealth, arguing that low-wealth consumers are more likely to be constrained. We propose alternative tests using different and more direct information on borrowing constraints obtained from the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances. In a first stage we estimate probabilities of being constrained, which are then utilized in a second sample, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to estimate switching regression models of the Euler equation. Our estimates indicate stronger excess sensitivity associated with the possibility of liquidity constraints than the sample splitting approach.
Estimating the Density Tail Index for Financial Time Series

Abstract The tail index of a density has been widely used as an indicator of the probability of getting a large deviation in a random variable. Most of the theory underlying popular estimators of it assume that the data are independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.). However, many recent applications of the estimator have been to financial data, and such data tend to exhibit long-range dependence. We show, via Monte Carlo simulations, that conventional measures of the precision of the estimator, which are based on the i.i. d. assumption, are greatly exaggerated when such dependent data are used. This conclusion also has implications for estimates of the likelihood of getting some extreme values, and we illustrate the changed conclusions one would get using equity return data.
General Discussion

On the arst theme, Ho Lok Sang argued that a comparison of the current NPL situation with that during the prereform era when the banks were fully owned by the Ministry of Finance could lead to misleading inferences. In the pre-reform period, according to Lok Sang, the picture was artiacially rosy because the Ministry of Finance continuously recapitalized banks. Although the current NPL situation looks alarming, the banks could in fact be better managed. Huijin (the asset management company) is fully owned and directly supervised by the People’s Bank of China (PBC) and so its activities are fully transparent to PBC. This feature would have enabled PBC to monitor and manage the banks’ balance sheets effectively. Lok Sang said that it is quite possible that the present banking system is well managed without being known to us. Guonan Ma replied that it was not possible to assess the operations of Huijin and the implications for taxpayers because its activities were fully funded by PBC in a highly secretive manner. The level of acquired NPLs could well be rising and PBC should therefore design a contingent exit strategy that would reduce the adverse macroeconomic consequences. Ma said that the amalgamation of balance sheets of individual banks would be one possible strategy.
The Relationships among Expected Inflation, Disagreement, and Uncertainty: Evidence from Matched Point and Density Forecasts

This paper examines matched point and density forecasts of inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters to analyze the relationships among expected inflation, disagreement, and uncertainty. We undertake the empirical analysis within a seemingly unrelated regression framework and derive measures of uncertainty using a decomposition proposed by Wallis (2004, 2005) and by drawing on the concept of entropy. The results offer little evidence that disagreement is a useful proxy for uncertainty and mixed evidence that increases in expected inflation are accompanied by heightened uncertainty. Conversely, we document a quantitatively and statistically significant positive association between disagreement and expected inflation.
Patent Protection, Market Uncertainty, and R&D Investment

Abstract The main reason governments grant patent protection is to spur innovation. However, the size of the R&D stimulus from patent protection is far from clear because it depends on how effective patents are as a mechanism for appropriating returns. Drawing on real options investment theory, this paper highlights one mechanism through which patents may improve appropriability and stimulate R&D investment: patents reduce the effect of market uncertainty on the firm’s investment decision. We find that firm-level R&D investment falls in response to higher levels of uncertainty, but that patent protection partially mitigates the influence of uncertainty.
Universities as a Source of Commercial Technology: A Detailed Analysis of University Patenting, 19651988

This paper explores the recent explosion in university patenting as a source of insight into the changing relationship between the university and the private sector. Before the mid-1980s, university patents were more highly cited, and were cited by more diverse patents, than a random sample of all patents. More recently several significant shifts in university patenting behavior have led to the disappearance of this difference. Thus our results suggest that between 1965 and 1988 the rate of increase of important patents from universities was much less than their overall rate of increase of patenting.
Determiner Raising and Scope Shift

Whether quantifier scope is regulated by movement or not has been debated for more than two decades, and this issue has become especially important in the minimalist framework. This article provides a novel argument for the existence of a scope-marking movement operation on the basis of what can be called the split-QP construction in Japanese. It is shown that the construction involves overt movement of quantificational determiners, whereby their scope is visibly marked, and that the movement operation is subject to economy so that it may apply only if it yields scope shift.
Shedding Computational Light on Human Creativity

Ever since 1956 when details of the Logic Theorist were published by Newell and Simon, a large literature has accumulated on computational models and theories of the creative process, especially in science, invention and design. But what exactly do these computational models/theories tell us about the way that humans have actually conducted acts of creation in the past? What light has computation shed on our understanding of the creative process? Addressing these questions, we put forth three propositions: (I) Computational models of the creative process are fundamentally flawed as theories of human creativity. Rather, the universal power of computational models lies elsewhere: (II) Computational models of particular acts of creation can serve as effective experiments to test universal hypotheses about creative processes and mechanisms; and (III) Computation-based architectures of the creative mind provide metaphorical frameworks that, like all good metaphors, can serve as rich sources of insight into aspects of the creative process. In this paper, we provide evidence for these three propositions by drawing upon some particular episodes in the cognitive history of science, technology, and art.
Is China Fear Warranted? Perspectives from Japan's Trade and Investment Relationships with China

A fear of China's economic growth, particularly with regard to its recent evolution into the factory of the world, is often expressed in the Japanese mass media. This paper reviews the development of trade and investment relations between Japan and China and examines the validity of this China fear, pointing out the ways in which China continues to lag behind Japan on many economic fronts and describing strategies that Japan could use to improve its performance. Japanese firms need to focus on producing more specialized high-tech products. At the same time, to cope with competition from China, they must take more drastic measures to keep costs down in the production of low-tech products. Some Japanese enterprises have already initiated new approaches in management, production, and distribution. The views of three of Japan's leading economists are critically reviewed, with a focus on how Japanese firms might draw profitable lessons from China's situation, improve their joint ventures with Chinese firms, and benefit from China's large market by concentrating more on local conditions.
Competing at Home to Win Abroad: Evidence from Japanese Industry

The study explores the influence of domestic competition on international trade performance, using data from a broad sample of Japanese industries. Domestic rivalry is measured directly using market-share instability rather than employing structural variables such as seller concentration. We find robust evidence that domestic rivalry has a positive and significant relationship with trade performance measured by world export share, particularly when R&D intensity reveals opportunities for dynamic improvement and innovation. Conversely, trade protection reduces export performance. These findings support the view that local competitionnot monopoly, collusion, or a sheltered home market pressures dynamic improvement that leads to international competitiveness.
On Architecture under Capitalism

and ahistorical notion of forces remained symptomatic of mystification. For instance, Schapiro attributed Mumford’s interest in invisible forces to a “Sad dilettante muddle of Whitehead, Bergson and ABC’s of the cosmos! ” Schapiro, “Looking Forward,” Partisan Review, 18. 35. A notable exception to this is Andrew Hemmingway, “Meyer Schapiro and Marxism in the 1930s,” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 13–29. Hemmingway’s account also provides relevant biographical information on Schapiro and his position with respect to the New York Intellectuals of this period. 36. Schapiro, “Architects Utopia,” 47. 37. Schapiro, “Architecture under Capitalism,” 12. 38. Meyer Schapiro, “Architects and the Crisis: An Open Letter to the Architects, Draughtsmen, and Technicians of America” (1932), in Worldview in Painting—Art and Society (New York: Braziller, 1999), 168–172. The anonymous pamphlet was published by the Architects’ Committee of the League of Professional Groups for Foster and Ford. William Z. Foster and James W. Ford were Communist Party candidates in the 1932 presidential elections. 39. Meyer Schapiro, “Architecture and the Architect,” New Masses (April 7 1936): 30–31. Reprinted in this dossier. 40. Schapiro, “Architecture and the Architect,” 31. 41. On the politics of the Popular Front, which set out to forge alliances against
Vertical Intra-Industry Trade and Economic Integration in East Asia

It is notable that the trade in East Asian countries has increased more than proportionately to the growth of economy. This paper tests the hypothesis that the recent trade expansion is induced by development of international fragmentation of production. This paper constructs an index of vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT) to measure the fragmentation of production, and finds that the share of VIIT has been rising in East Asia as well as in NAFTA and the EU using the gravity equation. It also establishes that a rising share of VIIT is an important factor in explaining the recent expansion of trade with East Asia. The results suggest that an agreement to remove and harmonize institutional impediments among East Asian countries is important for further expansion of trade within the region.
Deadlock or Transformational Change? Exploring Public Discourse on REDD+ Across Seven Countries

This article investigates the public discourses on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) across seven countries, to assess whether they support policy reforms. We argue that transformational discourses have at least one of these characteristics: they advocate specific policy reforms that address the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation; take into account the potential risks of a REDD+ mechanism; go beyond technocratic solutions to reduce emissions; and explicitly challenge existing power relations that support drivers of deforestation. The evidence indicates the predominance of win-win storylines, a lack of engagement by state actors with debates on the potential negative socioeconomic outcomes of REDD+, and little attention to the drivers of deforestation. The article concludes that to achieve a shift toward transformational public discourse, reformist policy actors and the media need to engage dominant policy actors in debates about how to reduce pressure on the forest.
When the Bell Tolls: The Effects of School Starting Times on Academic Achievement

A number of high schools across the United States have moved to later bell times on the belief that their previous bell times were too early for the “biological clocks” of adolescents. In this article I study whether doing so improves academic performance. I first focus on the Twin Cities metropolitan area, where Minneapolis and several suburban districts have made large policy changes but St. Paul and other suburban districts have maintained early schedules. I use individual-level ACT data on all individuals from public high schools in this region who took the ACT between 1993 and 2002 to estimate the effects of school starting times on ACT scores. I then employ school-level data on schedules and test scores on statewide standardized tests from Kansas and Virginia to estimate the effects of bell times on achievement for a broader sample. The results do not suggest an effect of school starting times on achievement.
Control in Icelandic and Theories of Control

This article examines a pervasive argument against a movement approach to control based on Icelandic concord facts. We show that the argument does not undermine the movement approach when the facts are considered in their entirety. The facts divide into two basic groups: instances of quirky Case assignment and instances of structural Case sharing. The former require some theoretical adjustments regarding multiply Case-marked NPs in order to be incorporated into a movement approach. We show that the adjustments needed may be independently required, and may be even more problematic for alternative views on control.
Fixed-Effects and Related Estimators for Correlated Random-Coefficient and Treatment-Effect Panel Data Models

I derive conditions under which a class of fixed-effects estimators consistently estimates the population-averaged slope coefficients in panel data models with individual-specific slopes, where the slopes are allowed to be correlated with the covariates. In addition to including the usual fixed-effects estimator, the results apply to estimators that eliminate individual-specific trends. I apply the results, and propose alternative estimators, to estimation of average treatment in a class of nonlinear unobserved-effects models.
External Capital Factors and Increasing Returns in U.S. Manufacturing

Theoretical models of endogenous growth identify capital accumulation and returns as a potential stimulus to economic growth. Existing empirical studies, however, are based on a limited notion of these returns, which follows from the simple production function framework used for estimation. The purpose of this study is to examine growth issues using dynamic cost function estimation. This methodology enables us to broaden the concept of returns to include returns arising from short-run quasi-fixity of private capital, long-run (internal) scale economies, and external knowledge factorsoverall investment in research (R&D), technology (high-tech capital), and education (human capital). Based on detailed industry-level data, we find evidence of increasing returns to scale arising from cost savings on variable inputs, although diminishing returns to capital are prevalent. Our results also show that knowledge factors augment growth. More importantly, they appear to explain a substantial proportion of measured scale economies.
Don't Hold Back? The Effect of Grade Retention on Student Achievement

This study analyzes the effect of age-based retention on school achievement at different stages of education. I estimate an instrumental variable model, using the predicted probability of retention given month of birth as an instrument, while simultaneously accounting for the effect of month of birth on maturity at the time of testing. The analysis further assesses heterogeneity in retention effects by achievement, by background characteristics, and by type of skill. Using international data from multiple waves of the PISA international assessment test, I find that grade retention in primary school harms student achievement across the distribution, while delayed school entry can produce positive results for those at the lower end. The identified local average treatment effect indicates that letting students retain in primary school because of a low relative age is harmful for their future school achievement.
(Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics) Precautionary Behavior, Migrant Networks and Household Consumption Decisions: An Empirical Analysis Using Household Panel Data from Rural China*

We develop a test of precautionary behavior in the consumption decisions of rural agricultural households. Among surveyed households facing a median level of consumption risk, 10 percent of savings can be attributed to a precautionary motive, and this increases to 15 percent for households with consumption per capita below the poverty line. We next use distant lags of local rainfall shocks uncorrelated with current consumption growth to identify the size of migrant networks outside the village, and then present evidence that both poor and non-poor households engage in less precautionary saving as the size of the village migrant network increases.
Export Superstars

Abstract We show that very large firms shape country export patterns. Among 32 countries, the top firm on average accounts for 14% of a country’s total (nonoil) exports, and the top five firms make up 30%. These export superstars are also important in the sectoral distribution of exports. Variation in exports from the top firm in a country explains about one-third of the variation in sectoral exports relative to income across countries, and variation in exports from the top five firms explains nearly half. Revealed comparative advantage in a sector can be created by a single firm.
What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave?

Abstract We assess the case for generous government-funded maternity leave, focusing on a series of policy reforms in Norway that expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks. We find the reforms do not crowd out unpaid leave and that mothers spend more time at home without a reduction in family income. The increased maternity leave has little effect on children's schooling, parental earnings and labor force participation, completed fertility, marriage, or divorce. The expansions, whose net costs amounted to 0.25% of GDP, have negative redistribution properties and imply a considerable increases in taxes at a cost to economic efficiency.
Navigating Policy Responses at the National Level in the Midst of the Global Financial Crisis: The Experience of Indonesia

While the global financial crisis (GFC) deepens with no clear signs of abatement, it is almost impossible to assess its full impacts on any economies, including that of Indonesia. Nonetheless, it is important to take stock of the impacts of the GFC on Indonesia and to assess the implementation and the progress of ongoing policy responses. In particular, our study scrutinizes policy responses from two key fronts, namely fiscal and monetary policies, and highlights challenges and potential shortcomings.
Branch Banking and the Geography of Bank Pricing

We show that bank branching tends to mitigate localized market power by broadening the geographic scope of competition among banks, even though branch banking allows banks to differentiate themselves through their choices of branch locations. Banking services at peripheral locations will be priced more competitively when those locales are served by branch networks. We develop a theoretical model in support of this view and offer empirical evidence.
Credit and Economic Activity: Credit Regimes and Nonlinear Propagation of Shocks

In this paper, we examine empirically whether credit plays a role as a nonlinear propagator of shocks. This propagation takes the form of a threshold vector autoregression in which a regime change occurs if credit conditions cross a critical threshold. Using nonlinear impulseresponse functions, we evaluate the dynamics implied by the threshold model. These suggest that shocks have a larger effect on output in the ''tight'' credit regime than is normally the case, and that contractionary monetary shocks typically have a larger effect than expansionary shocks. Finally, using a nonlinear version of historical decompositions, we attempt to determine the relative contribution to output growth of shocks and the nonlinear structure.