Econometric and statistical methods
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No Double Standards: Quantifying the Impact of Standard Harmonization on Trade
Product standards are omnipresent in industrialized societies. Though standardization can be beneficial for domestic producers, divergent product standards have been categorized as a major obstacle to international trade. This paper quantifies the effect of standard harmonization on trade flows and characterizes the extent to which it changes the cost and demand structure of exporting. -
The Intergenerational Correlation of Employment: Is There a Role for Work Culture?
We document a substantial positive correlation of employment status between mothers and their children in the United States, linking data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Children and Young Adults. After controlling for ability, education and wealth, a one-year increase in a mother’s employment is associated with six weeks more employment of her child on average. -
Explaining the Interplay Between Merchant Acceptance and Consumer Adoption in Two-Sided Markets for Payment Methods
Recent consumer and merchant surveys show a decrease in the use of cash at the point of sale. Increasingly, consumers and merchants have access to a growing array of payment innovations as substitutes for cash. -
Resolving Failed Banks: Uncertainty, Multiple Bidding & Auction Design
Bank resolution is costly. In the United States, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) typically resolves failing banks by auction. -
Tail Index Estimation: Quantile-Driven Threshold Selection
The most extreme events, such as economic crises, are rare but often have a great impact. It is difficult to precisely determine the likelihood of such events because the sample is small. -
Estimating the Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on Total Exports
This paper shows that real effective exchange rate (REER) regressions, the standard approach for estimating the response of aggregate exports to exchange rate changes, imply biased estimates of the underlying elasticities. We provide a new aggregate regression specification that is consistent with bilateral trade flows micro-founded by the gravity equation. -
Composite Likelihood Estimation of an Autoregressive Panel Probit Model with Random Effects
Modeling and estimating persistent discrete data can be challenging. In this paper, we use an autoregressive panel probit model where the autocorrelation in the discrete variable is driven by the autocorrelation in the latent variable. In such a non-linear model, the autocorrelation in an unobserved variable results in an intractable likelihood containing high-dimensional integrals. -
Disentangling the Factors Driving Housing Resales
We use a recently developed model and loan-level microdata to decompose movements in housing resales since 2015. We find that fundamental factors, namely housing affordability and full-time employment, have had offsetting effects on resales over our study period. -
Firm-level Investment Under Imperfect Capital Markets in Ukraine
This paper develops and estimates a model of firm-level fixed capital investment when firms face borrowing constraints.