Melvyn Weeks

Bio: Melvyn Weeks is an academic researcher from University of Cambridge. The author has contributed to research in topics: Discrete choice & Social relation. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 54 publications receiving 2285 citations. Previous affiliations of Melvyn Weeks include International Monetary Fund.

Discrete Choice Models in Preference Space and Willingness-to Pay Space

Abstract: In models with unobserved taste heterogeneity, distributional assumptions can be placed in two ways: (1) by specifying the distribution of coefficients in the utility function and deriving the distribution of willingness to pay (WTP), or (2) by specifying the distribution of WTP and deriving the distribution of coefficients. In general the two approaches are equivalent, in that any mutually compatible distributions for coefficients and WTP can be represented in either way. However, in practice, convenient distributions, such as normal or log-normal, are usually specified, and these convenient distributions have different implications when placed on WTP’s than on coefficients. We compare models that use normal and log-normal distributions for coefficients (called models in preference space) with models using these distributions for WTP (called models in WTP space). We find that the models in preference space fit the data better but provide less reasonable distributions of WTP than the models in WTP space. Our findings suggests that further work is needed to identify distributions that either fit better when applied in WTP space or imply more reasonable distributions of WTP when applied in preference space.

Identifying and i nterpreting r egional convergence clusters across europe

Abstract: In this paper we test for regional convergence clusters across the EU. We utilise a methodology that allows for the endogenous selection of regional clusters using a multivariate test for stationarity, where the number and composition of clusters are determined by the application of pairwise tests of regional differences in per capita output over time. To interpret the composition of the resulting convergence clusters, the latter are tested against a number of possible groupings suggested by recent theories and hypotheses of regional growth and convergence. Further, our method allows regional convergence clusters to vary over time.

Identifying and Interpreting Regional Convergence Clusters across Europe

Abstract: In this paper we test for regional convergence clusters across the EU. We utilise a methodology that allows for the endogenous selection of regional clusters using a multivariate test for stationarity, where the number and composition of clusters are determined by the application of pairwise tests of regional differences in per capita output over time. To interpret the composition of the resulting convergence clusters, the latter are tested against a number of possible groupings suggested by recent theories and hypotheses of regional growth and convergence. Further, our method allows regional convergence clusters to vary over time.

Microsimulation Modelling For Policy Analysis: Challenges and Innovations

Abstract: 1. Introduction L. Mitton, H. Sutherland and M. Weeks Part I. New Directions for Microsimulation: 2. The unit of analysis in microsimulation models for personal income taxes fiscal unit or household? A. Decoster and G. Van Camp 3. Assessing the direct and indirect effects of social policy: integrating the input-output and tax microsimulation models at Statistics Canada G. Cameron and R. Ezzedin 4. A microsimulation analysis of the distribution of the indirect tax burden among Greek households G. Kaplanoglou 5. Can we do better comparative research using microsimulation models? Lessons from the Micro-Analysis of Pensions Systems K. Rake 6. Integrating output in EUROMOD: an assesment of the sensitivity of multi-country microsimulation results C. O'Donoghue, H. Sutherland and F. Utili 7. The impact of demographic and other changes on expenditure on pharmaceutical benefits in 2020 in Australia A. Walker, R. Percival and A. Harding 8. Public pensions in a dynamic microanalytic framework: the case of France C. Bonnet and R. Mahieu 9. Validation of longitudinal dynamic microsimulation models: experience with CORSIM and DYNACAM S. Caldwell and R. J. Morrison 10. Charging for care in later life: an exercise in dynamic microsimulation R. Hancock 11. Individual alignment and group processing: an application to migration processes in DYNACAN D. Chenard 12. Unemployment insurance and labour mobility: analysis using a new Swedish microsimulation model N. Swan 13. Joint labour supply of married couples: efficiency and distribution effects of tax and labour market reforms R. Aaberge, U. Colombino, S. Strom and T. Wennemo 14. Transition estimators in discrete choice models A. Duncan and M. Weeks.

Provincial Conditional Income Convergence in China, 1953–1997: A Panel Data Approach

Abstract: This paper examines the tendency towards income convergence among China's main provinces during the two periods: the pre‐reform period 1953–1977 and the reform period 1978–1997 using the framework of the Solow growth model. The panel data method accounts for not only province‐specific initial technology level but also the heterogeneity of the technological progress rate between the fast‐growing coastal and interior provinces. Estimation problems of weak instruments and endogeneity are addressed by the use of a system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. The main empirical finding is that there is a system‐wide income divergence during the reform period because the coastal provinces do not share a common technology progress rate with the interior provinces.

Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation

Abstract: This book describes the new generation of discrete choice methods, focusing on the many advances that are made possible by simulation. Researchers use these statistical methods to examine the choices that consumers, households, firms, and other agents make. Each of the major models is covered: logit, generalized extreme value, or GEV (including nested and cross-nested logits), probit, and mixed logit, plus a variety of specifications that build on these basics. Simulation-assisted estimation procedures are investigated and compared, including maximum simulated likelihood, method of simulated moments, and method of simulated scores. Procedures for drawing from densities are described, including variance reduction techniques such as anithetics and Halton draws. Recent advances in Bayesian procedures are explored, including the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and its variant Gibbs sampling. No other book incorporates all these fields, which have arisen in the past 20 years. The procedures are applicable in many fields, including energy, transportation, environmental studies, health, labor, and marketing.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

Simulation for the Social Scientist

Abstract: What can computer simulation contribute to the social sciences? Which of the many approaches to simulation would be best for my social science project? How do I design, carry out and analyse the results from a computer simulation? This is a practical textbook on the techniques of building computer simulations to assist understanding of social and economic issues and problems. Interest in social simulation has been growing rapidly worldwide as a result of increasingly powerful hardware and software and also a rising interest in the application of ideas of complexity, evolution, adaptation and chaos in the social sciences. This authoritative book details all the common approaches to social simulation, to provide social scientists with an appreciation of the literature and allow those with some programming skills to create their own simulations.New for this edition is a chapter on how to use simulation as a tool. A new chapter on multi-agent systems has also been added to support the fact that multi-agent modelling has become the preferred approach to simulation. Social scientists in a wide range of fields will find this book an essential tool for research, particularly in sociology, economics, anthropology, geography, organizational theory, political science, social policy, cognitive psychology and cognitive science. It will also appeal to computer scientists interested in distributed artificial intelligence, multi-agent systems and agent technologies.