Bong Joon Yoon

Religiosity, Economics and Life Satisfaction

This paper uses a large individual data set from the Euro Barometer Survey (ICPSR 1993) to estimate the influence of religious phenomena on self-perceived satisfaction of an individual, controlling for macroeconomic conditions, effects of his political stance, and other socio-economic variables. Our estimated ordered logit model results show that an individuals life satisfaction is positively related to measures of strong religious attachment in the sense of being willing to commit to attending religious services frequently. Our other findings include that no strong evidence exists for the hypothesis that leftists suffer more from income inequality.

An empirical investigation of returns to scale: The Welsh coal industry

Abstract This article attempts to study both returns to scale and optimal size of production. Specifically, the authors estimate a ray-homothetic production function which allows the returns to scale to vary with ouput size and input mix. The production model is estimated using data from the Welsh coal industry for the period 1961–1976. Findings showed that, first, the Welsh coal industry suffers from a level of production which is either too small or below its optimal level and, second, this discrepancy between actual and optimal production worsened over the period considered.

Variable elasticity of substitution in urban housing production

Abstract The notion that the elasticity of substitution in urban housing production should vary with changing intensities of land use seems to be realistic and theoretically viable. Hence the variable elasticity of substitution production function has been proposed by some authors. However, it suffers from a serious shortcoming that the elasticity of substitution should not exceed unity. To allow for flexibility in the range of the elasticity of substitution, we explore a general functional form for the housing production function, the weak disposability of inputs production function in particular. Our empirical findings, based on the Santa Clara County single-family housing data, provide evidence that this general function is a more accurate specification of urban housing production than the variable elasticity of substitution function.

A non-stationary hazard function of leaving unemployment for employment

Abstract This paper introduces a non-stationary hazard of exiting unemployment for employment. The source of the non-stationarity is the duration dependent intensity of offer arrivals subject to a Poisson process. Based on these non-stationary offer arrivals and simplifying assumptions, a closed form non-stationary hazard of exiting unemployment is derived using a sequential search model.

Returns to scale in U.S. surface mining of coal

Abstract This paper applies a ray-homothetic production function in order to study returns to scale and optimal scale in U.S. surface mining of coal.

Risk Behavior Under Linear Utility Function

An uncertainly model based on money-market imperfections and on linear utility functions (of money) is reformulated so as to be directly with the traditional non-linear utility approach. We postulate that the utility is a linear functions of “augmented” income. But the augmented income is a non-linear function of the nominal income, due to differential interest rates. This new formulation is shown to generate all the essential implications of the traditional approach as in Friedman and Savage, Markowtiz, Arrow, and Pratt. [020]

An alternative to the box-cox transformation in model discrimination

Abstract This paper proposes an alternative to the Box-Cox transformation. The alternative transformation, utilizing three runs of regressions, simplifies maximum likelihood estimation of the nesting parameter for model discrimination.

A regression model of the heteroscedastic error variance

Abstract We introduce a regression model of the heteroscedastic error variance. A repetitive use of the least squares method is shown to provide the best linear unbiased estimator of the parameter vector of the model.