Offering a unifying theoretical perspective not readily available in any other text, this innovative guide to econometrics uses simple geometrical arguments to develop students' intuitive understanding of basic and advanced topics, emphasizing throughout the practical applications of modern theory and nonlinear techniques of estimation. One theme of the text is the use of artificial regressions for estimation, reference, and specification testing of nonlinear models, including diagnostic tests for parameter constancy, serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, and other types of mis-specification. Explaining how estimates can be obtained and tests can be carried out, the authors go beyond a mere algebraic description to one that can be easily translated into the commands of a standard econometric software package. Covering an unprecedented range of problems with a consistent emphasis on those that arise in applied work, this accessible and coherent guide to the most vital topics in econometrics today is indispensable for advanced students of econometrics and students of statistics interested in regression and related topics. It will also suit practising econometricians who want to update their skills. Flexibly designed to accommodate a variety of course levels, it offers both complete coverage of the basic material and separate chapters on areas of specialized interest.

Estimation and Inference in Econometrics

The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

One of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world. These policies have affected the lives of millions of people, yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices. Evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially. We hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion. We think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces: one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting. We develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms, construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts, and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account, the capital account, and the exchange rate regime. Our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient. The evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country's sociocultural peers. We interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments' search for appropriate models for economic policy.

/pdf/the-globalization-of-liberalization-policy-diffusion-in-the-3182u08iz4.pdf

The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy

cal dimension: the UK, the EU and the US. The profound recent changes in the industrial relations framework in the UK are described by John Addison and Stanley Siebert. They describe anti-union legislation enacted during the period 19801993 and relate it to the recent decline of unionism. The authors further examine the accession of ‘New Labour’ and its related reform agenda. They also discuss the prospect of new legislation seeking to regulate the employment relation from the level of the European Union and its impact on relevant British legislation.

Growing public - social spending and economic growth since the eighteenth century

In this book, Yasheng Huang makes a provocative claim: the large absorption of foreign direct investment (FDI) by China is a sign of some substantial weaknesses in the Chinese economy. The primary benefits associated with China's FDI inflows are concerned with the privatization functions supplied by foreign firms, venture capital provisions to credit-constrained private entrepreneurs, and promotion of interregional capital mobility. Huang argues that one should ask why domestic firms cannot supply the same functions. China's partial reforms, while successful in increasing the scope of the market, have so far failed to address many allocative inefficiencies in the Chinese economy.

Selling China : Foreign Direct Investment During the Reform Era

The behavior of privately and publicly owned water utilities is examined by estimating a generalized variable cost function containing the regular characteristics of the neoclassical cost function without requiring that cost minimization subject to market prices be imposed as a maintained hypothesis. Assuming that unobserved shadow prices reflect the regulatory environment of the water industry, tests for cost minimization are obtained by deriving shadow prices as functions of market prices. The empirical results provide evidence that public water utilities are more efficient than private utilities on average, but are more widely dispersed between best and worst practice.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3146322

An Examination of the Effect of Ownership on the Relative Efficiency of Public and Private Water Utilities

Technical change, technical efficiency and multifactor productivity indices are reported for a multiple-output, multiple-input production technology using Chinese provincial data for the 1979-95 period. Results show significant variation in productivity change from year to year and province to province. Using panel methods, we regress the three production indices on several factors important in explaining productivity changes. Decollectivisation in the early 1980s accounts for a significant expansion of the frontier, while rural industrialisation decreased agricultural productivity. Productivity is also sensitive to relative grain prices, to natural disasters such as flood and drought, and proximity of the provinces to coastal areas.

http://www.business.unr.edu/faculty/parker/papers/Lambert-Parker_JAE1998.pdf

Productivity in Chinese Provincial Agriculture

Labor productivity and migration in Chinese agriculture A stochastic frontier approach

http://www.coba.unr.edu/faculty/parker/papers/Cargill-Parker_NAJEF2004.pdf

Elliott Parker

Papers

An Examination of the Effect of Ownership on the Relative Efficiency of Public and Private Water Utilities

Productivity in Chinese Provincial Agriculture

Labor productivity and migration in Chinese agriculture A stochastic frontier approach

Price deflation, money demand, and monetary policy discontinuity: a comparative view of Japan, China, and the United States

The effect of scale on the response to reform by Chinese state-owned construction units