On the overestimation of the largest eigenvalue of a covariance matrix....
In this paper, we use a new approach to prove that the largest eigenvalue of the sample covariance matrix of a normally distributed vector is bigger than the true largest eigenvalue with probability 1...
View ArticleOil economy phase plot: a physical analogy. (arXiv:1708.03533v1 [q-fin.GN])
A phase plot of the oil economy is built using the literature data of world oil production, price, and EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). An analogy between the oil economy and the Benard...
View ArticleTechnology networks: the autocatalytic origins of innovation....
We search an autocatalytic structure in networks of technological fields and evaluate its significance for technological change. To this aim we define a technology network based on the International...
View ArticleSimulating Business Cash Flow Taxation: An Illustration Based on the...
The U.S., according to some measures, has one of the highest marginal effective corporate tax rates (METRs) of any developed country. Yet the tax collects less than 2 percent of GDP. This paper studies...
View ArticleOn the Dynamics of Community Development -- by Levon Barseghyan, Stephen Coate
This paper presents a dynamic political economy model of community development. In each period, a community invests in a local public good. The community can grow, with new housing supplied by...
View ArticleOpportunities and Challenges: Lessons from Analyzing Terabytes of Scanner...
This paper seeks to better understand what makes big data analysis different, what we can and cannot do with existing econometric tools, and what issues need to be dealt with in order to work with the...
View ArticleLevel and Volatility Factors in Macroeconomic Data -- by Yuriy Gorodnichenko,...
The conventional wisdom in macroeconomic modeling is to attribute business cycle fluctuations to innovations in the level of the fundamentals. Though volatility shocks could be important too, their...
View ArticleGlobalization and the Increasing Correlation between Capital Inflows and...
We document that the correlation between capital inflows and outflows has increased substantially over time in a sample of 128 advanced and developing countries. We provide evidence that this is a...
View ArticlePortfolio Liquidity and Diversification: Theory and Evidence -- by Lubos...
A portfolio's liquidity depends not only on the liquidity of its holdings but also on its diversification. We propose simple, theoretically motivated measures of portfolio liquidity and...
View ArticleIndirect Inference with Importance Sampling: An Application to Women's Wage...
This paper has two main parts. In the first, we describe a method that smooths the objective function in a general class of indirect inference models. Our smoothing procedure makes use of importance...
View ArticleSubsidizing Health Insurance for Low-Income Adults: Evidence from...
How much are low-income individuals willing to pay for health insurance, and what are the implications for insurance markets? Using administrative data from Massachusetts' subsidized insurance...
View ArticlePeople Versus Machines: The Impact of Minimum Wages on Automatable Jobs -- by...
We study the effect of minimum wage increases on employment in automatable jobs - jobs in which employers may find it easier to substitute machines for people - focusing on low-skilled workers from...
View ArticleMacro and Micro Dynamics of Productivity: From Devilish Details to Insights...
Researchers use a variety of methods to estimate total factor productivity (TFP) at the firm level and, while these may seem broadly equivalent, how the resulting measures relate to the TFP concept in...
View ArticleShopping for Lower Sales Tax Rates -- by Scott R. Baker, Stephanie Johnson,...
Using comprehensive high-frequency state and local sales tax data, we show that household spending responds strongly to changes in sales tax rates. Even though sales taxes are not observed in posted...
View ArticleDebt and Financial Vulnerability on the Verge of Retirement -- by Annamaria...
We analyze older individuals' debt and financial vulnerability using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS). Specifically, in the HRS we...
View ArticleSystematic Managed Floating -- by Jeffrey A. Frankel
A majority of countries neither freely float their currencies nor firmly peg. But most of the remainder in practice also don't obey such well-defined intermediate exchange rate regimes as target zones....
View ArticleConsumer Learning and the Entry of Generic Pharmaceuticals -- by Neha...
Generic pharmaceuticals provide low-cost access to treatment. Despite their chemical equivalence to branded products, many mechanisms may hinder generic substitution. Consumers may be unaware of their...
View ArticleWhat Does (Formal) Health Insurance Do, and For Whom? -- by Amy Finkelstein,...
Health insurance confers benefits to the previously uninsured, including improvements in health, reductions in out-of-pocket spending, and reduced medical debt. But because the nominally uninsured pay...
View ArticleThe Effect of Fertility on Mothers' Labor Supply over the Last Two Centuries...
This paper documents the evolving impact of childbearing on the work activity of mothers. Based on a compiled dataset of 441 censuses and surveys between 1787 and 2015, representing 103 countries and...
View ArticleCommodity Booms and Busts in Emerging Economies -- by Thomas Drechsel,...
Emerging economies, particularly those dependent on commodity exports, are prone to highly disruptive economic cycles. This paper proposes a small open economy model for a net commodity exporter to...
View Article