International Momentum Strategies

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of decomposition methods that have been developed since the seminal work of Oaxaca and Blinder in the early 1970s. These methods are used to decompose the difference in a distributional statistic between two groups, or its change over time, into various explanatory factors. While the original work of Oaxaca and Blinder considered the case of the mean, our main focus is on other distributional statistics besides the mean, such as quantiles, the Gini coefficient or the variance. We discuss the assumptions required for identifying the different elements of the decomposition, as well as various estimation methods proposed in the literature. We also illustrate how these methods work in practice by discussing existing applications and working through a set of empirical examples throughout the paper.

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Decomposition methods in economics

Measuring Business Cycles

In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, Germany was often called "the sick man of Europe." Indeed, Germany's economic growth averaged only about 1.2 percent per year from 1998 to 2005, including a recession in 2003, and unemployment rates rose from 9.2 percent in 1998 to 11.1 percent in 2005. Today, after the Great Recession, Germany is described as an "economic superstar." In contrast to most of its European neighbors and the United States, Germany experienced almost no increase in unemployment during the Great Recession, despite a sharp decline in GDP in 2008 and 2009. Germany's exports reached an all-time record of $1.738 trillion in 2011, which is roughly equal to half of Germany's GDP, or 7.7 percent of world exports. Even the euro crisis seems not to have been able to stop Germany's strengthening economy and employment. How did Germany, with the fourth-largest GDP in the world transform itself from "the sick man of Europe" to an "economic superstar" in less than a decade? We present evidence that the specific governance structure of the German labor market institutions allowed them to react flexibly in a time of extraordinary economic circumstances, and that this distinctive characteristic of its labor market institutions has been the main reason for Germany's economic success over the last decade.

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From Sick Man of Europe to Economic Superstar: Germany's Resurgent Economy

We investigate, in a theoretical framework, the joint role played by investors' attention to news and learning uncertainty in determining asset prices. The model provides two main predictions. First, stock return variance and risk premia increase with both attention and uncertainty. Second, this increasing relationship is quadratic. We empirically test these two predictions, and we show that the data lend support to the increasing relationship. The evidence for a quadratic relationship is mixed. Overall, our study shows theoretically and empirically that both attention and uncertainty are key determinants of asset prices.

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Investor Attention and Stock Market Volatility

Union density in Germany has declined remarkably during the last two decades. We estimate socio-economic and workplace-related determinants of union membership in East and West Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel by means of Chamberlain-Mundlack correlated random effects probit models. Drawing on the estimates, we project net union densities (NUD) and analyze the differences between East and West Germany as well as the corresponding changes in NUD over time. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions show that changes in the composition of the work force have only played a minor role for the deunionization trends in East and West Germany. In East-West comparison, differences in the characteristics of the work force reflect a lower quality of membership matches in East Germany right after German unification.

The Erosion of Union Membership in Germany: Determinants, Densities, Decompositions

We study whether investors' active information acquisition, measured by search volume in Google (SVI), affects the dynamics of currency prices. Significantly correlated with trading activities of major players, SVI has a strong effect on FX market volatility beyond the volatility of macroeconomic fundamentals: (1) an increase in SVI is associated with higher volatility in both time series and cross section; (2) causal effects run mainly from SVI to volatility. In addition, SVI is related to currency risk premium and carry trade returns. Our results suggest that investor attention is a priced source of risk in FX markets.

/pdf/investor-attention-and-fx-market-volatility-lm4jy2b4tz.pdf

Investor Attention and FX Market Volatility

/pdf/investor-attention-and-fx-market-volatility-t0z39fa1nz.pdf

Investor attention and FX market volatility

Unionization in Germany has declined considerably during the last two decades. We estimate the impact of socioeconomic and workplace-related variables on union membership by means of Chamberlain-Mundlak correlated random effects probit models, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Drawing on the estimates, we project net union densities (NUD) and analyze the differences between East and West Germany, as well as the corresponding changes in NUD over time. Nonlinear Blinder-Oaxaca-type decompositions show that changes in the composition of the work force have only played a minor role for the deunionization trends in West and East Germany. In West-East comparison, differences in the characteristics of the work force reflect a lower quality of membership matches in East Germany right after German unification.

/pdf/the-erosion-of-union-membership-in-germany-determinants-3pxvgs3edo.pdf

The erosion of union membership in Germany: determinants, densities, decompositions

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/22621.pdf

Qingwei Wang

Papers

The Erosion of Union Membership in Germany: Determinants, Densities, Decompositions

Investor Attention and FX Market Volatility

Investor attention and FX market volatility

The erosion of union membership in Germany: determinants, densities, decompositions

A reappraisal of the leading indicator properties of the yield curve under structural instability