Showing papers by "Melvin J. Hinich published in 1996"

Testing for dependence in the input to a linear time series model

Abstract: This paper presents a simple test for dependence in the residuals of a linear parametric time series model fitted to non gaussian data. The test statistic is a third order extension of the standard correlation test for whiteness. but the number of lags used in this test is a function of the sample size. The power of this test goes to one as the sample size goes to infinity for any alternative which has non zero bicovariances c e3(r,s)= E[e(t)e(t + r)e(t + s)] for a zero mean stationary random time series. The asymptotic properties of the test statistic are rigorously determined. This test is important for the validation of the sampling properties of the parameter estimates for standard finite parameter linear models when the unobserved input (innovations) process is white but not gaussian. The sizes and power derived from the asymptotic results are checked using artificial data for a number of sample sizes. Theoretical and simulation results presented in this paper support the proposition that the test wi...

Conflict Displacement and Regime Transition in Taiwan: A Spatial Analysis

Abstract: This paper presents a spatial analysis of political competition in Taiwan in an effort to explore the role of conflict displacement in the process of democratic transition. In recent elections, a new cleavage on socioeconomic justice has emerged as a salient political issue in Taiwan, crosscutting the traditional cleavage on national identity. The authors first trace the historical trajectory of regime transition in order to provide a structural explanation of such a displacement of conflicts. Using data from the 1992 General Survey on Social Changes designed primarily by the authors for the Institute of Ethnology of Academia Sinica, they then present the results of a spatial analysis. The empirical findings confirm that socioeconomic justice together with national identity are the defining dimensions of the latent ideological space in which political competition takes place. The authors argue that, because of the availability of the new issue, political elites in Taiwan are undertaking a partisan realignment in both electoral and legislative politics, a process the authors consider conducive to both the transition to democracy and the consolidation of the new regime.