Knowledge that Transforms

Six-variable vector autoregressive systems consisting of macroeconomic series are investigated. parallel data series for four european countries are used: austria, germany (federal republic), finland, and the united kingdom. all data series are not seasonally adjusted. the aim of the paper is to show that most of the series are better modeled using stochastic seasonality and seasonal unit roots models than simple deterministic models of seasonal structures. as a second step, seasonal cointegration in the systems is studied. it is shown that all four economies display seasonal cointegration as well as usual cointegration.;

Randall P. Mariger, Kathryn Shaw, Unanticipated Aggregate Disturbances and Tests of the Life-Cycle Consumption Model Using Panel Data, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 48-56

The authors develop a new economic framework for the empirical analysis of retail margins. This framework formalizes the role of distribution services as outputs of retail activities. Their main results are the following: the measures of outputs of retail activities identified in the data perform as important and robust determinants of retail margins; variables that purport to capture oligopolistic features of market structure play a limited or no role in determining retail margins; quantity setting and price setting under the assumptions of profit maximization and monopolistic competition are categorically rejected by the data. The data base is information on 49 retail sectors from the 1982 U.S. Census of Retail Trades.

While the divestiture of AT&T was intended to produce benefits in the long-distance market, the evidence suggests it has created an unexpected side benefit in local telephone markets. The authors' results show that local exchange carriers have realized immediate cost savings in responding to competitive pressures since the breakup, with the baby Bells experiencing generally larger gains. Dynamically, these productivity gains have increased over time at a relatively constant rate. Although gains of 3-5 percent of total cost are not that large, the absolutely large costs of telephone companies imply significant cost savings of nearly $72 million for the representative firm.

Hamid Beladi, Munit A. S. Choudhary, Amar K. Parai, Rational and Adaptive Expectations in the Present Value Model of Hyperinflation, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp. 511-514

This paper analyzes the impact of macroeconomic activity on the level of poverty in the U.S. economy. The authors us e a macroeconometric model of poverty in the United States where the rat e of poverty is presumed to depend upon changes in various indicators of macroeconomic performance and policy. The authors empirically model the relationship between poverty and the macroeconomy with a hybrid mode l that employs a reduced-form model to capture the dynamic interaction s among the data and a structural economic model to describe the contemporaneous relationship between the variables.

The author estimates consumption variability ratios for both durable and nondurable consumption using data for six OECD countries. His methodology, which relies on a long-run restriction implied by the consumer's intertemporal budget constraint, overcomes many of the problems inherent to previous approaches. Some important departures from the permanent income model emerge: (1) nondurable consumption shows mild excess smoothness in the United States and Italy, and mild excess volatility in Japan and France, and (2) durable consumption shows extreme excess smoothness in all countries. Alternative factors capable of generating the differences in volatility across types of goods are discussed.

Of the share lost to one product because of a price change, diversion fractions are the fractions of that lost share going to each of the other products. This paper expresses product cross-elasticities in terms of diversion fractions and a scaling factor. Since the automotive market includes more than two-hundred products, time-series data are insufficient for estimating all elasticities. Instead, this paper estimates automotive elasticities by specifying the diversion fractions using cross-sectional first choice/second choice data and estimating the remaining scaling factor and own-elasticities using more aggregate elasticities estimated from time series.

This paper examines testable implications of the life-cycle theory of saving with lifetime uncertainty. Theory sugges ts that persons facing lower mortality rates should exhibit greater consumption growth. Nonparametric tests, using the Retirement Histor y Survey, provide mixed support for the theory. A parameterized model allowing for altruism provides more support. Estimates of a bequest parameter indicate that elderly households value contributions to bequests as highly as contributions to their own consumption. This i s equally true for households with and without children. Such a beques t motive would curtail the impact of lifetime uncertainty on consumpti on growth.