Knowledge that Transforms

A general linear simultaneous equation system with a multivariate Student t disturbance vector is considered. The normal equations of the corresponding maximum likelihood estimator are used as estimator generating equations to introduce a new class of estimators. Properties of large subclasses of these estimators are determined for disturbance vectors other than the multivariate Student t.

Most studies of commodity price stabilization assume that all agents behave competitively. However, many commodities suitable for stockpiling are produced by countries with a significant share of the world market, and commodity agreements themselves often result in cartelization of the market. The paper explores the consequences of market power for the choice of storage rule and the degree of price stabilization. It finds that with linear demand, dominant producers choose more stable prices than under perfect competition and price stability increases with their market share. With constant elastic demand the competitive degree of price stabilization is achieved.

[When the error covariance matrix in a linear model depends on a few unknown parameters, the regression coefficients can be estimated by a two-step procedure. Consistent estimates of the covariance parameters are first obtained and then used in a generalized least squares regression. Under the assumption that the errors are normal and the covariance parameter estimates are well behaved, an asymptotic expansion is developed for the distribution function of the two-step GLS estimate. the error in treating the estimate as normal is found to be of order n extasciicircum- extasciicircum2 as the sample size n tends to infinity.]

[The implications for efficient allocation of parents' inability to force transfers among siblings are explored. When there are differences in abilities of children within families, such transfers may be necessary to achieve a first-best solution. In the absence of such transfers, a tax on earned income and a subsidy to inheritance are useful second-best tools, whereas subsidies to investments in human capital or physical capital are not desirable.]

[This paper presents an analysis of a 2-person noncooperative bargaining game in which one party is free, subject to certain frictions, to switch between rival partners. This permits us to capture the notion of an asymmetry between "insiders" and "outsiders" in the context of a firm bargaining with its workers, in the presence of unemployment.]

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[The core of a game, which is an abstraction of the core or set of cooperative equilibrium states of an economy, is a fundamental notion of social equilibrium. However, except for games derived from special kinds of economic situations or satisfying restrictive (balancedness) conditions, the core is usually empty. In contrast, this paper shows that, with mild and economically natural assumptions, large games always have non-empty approximate cores. The game-theoretic framework is sufficiently general to cover a wide variety of economic situations.]

[We often see that the F test is applied to testing significance of a subset of coefficients even in a structural equation. This is obviously a doubtful method because the sum of squared errors is not distributed as χ ^2 in a simultaneous equation system. It is known, however, that the likelihood ratio test is asymptotically distributed as χ ^2 with proper degrees of freedom. We analyze the asymptotic properties of these two kinds of test statistics. We find the likelihood ratio method associated with limited information maximum likelihood estimation is reliable in practice.]