John Levendis

Telecommunications and economic growth: an empirical analysis of sub-Saharan Africa

We examine the effect on economic growth of mobile cellular phones in sub-Saharan Africa where a marked asymmetry is present between land-line penetration and mobile telecommunications expansion. This study extends previous ones along two important dimensions. First, we allow for the potential endogeneity between economic growth and telecommunications expansion by employing a special linear generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator. Second, we explicitly model for varying degrees of substitutability between mobile cellular and land-line telephony, so that greater expansion of mobile telecommunications can have a different impact whenever the level of land-line penetration differs. We find that mobile cellular phone expansion is an important determinant of the rate of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, we find that the contribution of mobile cellular phones to economic growth has been growing in importance in the region, and that the marginal impact of mobile telecommunication services is even greater wherever land-line phones are rare. Given the low cost of mobile telecommunications technology relative to other broad infrastructure projects, especially land-line infrastructure, we advocate that mobile telecommunication services be encouraged in the area.

On the endogeneity of telecommunications and economic growth: evidence from Asia

The impact of mobile and fixed telephones on economic growth has been the subject of increasing scrutiny in the literature on economic development. It is even of interest to theoretical macroeconomists, as it provides a useful test of the positive network externalities that should be present if endogenous growth theory is correct. We study the relationship between teledensity and growth in Asia, as the countries there have experienced wildly different levels of telephone penetration per capita, and of rates of growth of GDP per capita. We estimate several econometric models, one which explicitly treats telecom as strictly exogenous, and others which treat it as endogenous. Our conclusions are robust to the econometric specification. We find that the impact of teledensity on growth is positive, and increases with the level of telephone penetration. This provides support for endogenous growth theory.

Creation of a Separate Telecom Regulatory Agency: A Duration Analysis of its Time Pattern

At the center of the issues set out in the 1997 WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunication Services was the creation of separate telecom regulatory agencies. Using the Cox proportional hazards model, this study examines how a countrys socioeconomic factors affect the countrys incentive to reorganize its regulatory structure and create a separate telecom regulatory agency. The main empirical findings suggest that a countrys incentive to institute a separate telecom regulatory body is greater when its telecom sector performance is relatively poor and its political environment is more competitive with few institutional barriers. (JEL L52, L96)

IQ and Economic Development: A Critique of Lynn and Vanhanen

We re-examine Lynn and Vanhanens argument that gross domestic product (GDP) depends upon IQ. We argue that their analysis suffers from three types of biases, each of which would tend to erroneously favor their hypothesis. Despite this stacked deck, we find that their results are rather fragile. Rather, education has a stronger impact on GDP than does IQ, whose effect we find to be insignificant. In other words, it is a countrys actual human capital, rather than its potential human capital, which determines its GDP. In short, we are unable to replicate their results.

Estimating Geweke’s (1982) Measure of Instantaneous Feedback

In this article, we describe the gwke82 command, which implements a measure of instantaneous feedback for two time series following Geweke (1982, Journal of the American Statistical Association 77: 304–313). Copyright 2013 by StataCorp LP.

Hedging Market Volatility with Gold

The 2008 financial crisis has refocused investors’ attention to several safe-haven as- sets, most notably gold and US Treasuries. We compare the role of these two assets as safe havens from fluctuations in the indexes of the US’ largest exchanges. We estimate the instantaneous and lagged relationship between the safe-haven assets and volatility in the indexes. Treasuries seem to be the safe-haven of choice from volatility in the US equity markets during the crisis. We find almost no evidence that gold is a “safety asset” from volatility despite public opinion to the contrary.

Using RFID Technology to Track Attendance

The relationship between class attendance and academic performance continues to be of interest. The most common methods of tracking attendance, however, have their shortcomings and biases. We provide researchers with a method to collect unbiased and reliable attendance data. Late arrivals and early departures can also be recorded with ease, allowing researchers to evaluate these behaviors as well. Our method is intended to collect valuable attendance data at a minimal cost of time or money: setup takes 10-20 seconds per student initially, with no time lost subsequently, and the monetary cost is less than 29¢ for each student. An Excel-based version is discussed. Software code is provided, open-source, for instructors to implement.

Technical Financial Analysis Tools for Stata

In this article, we provide four financial technical analysis tools: moving averages, Bollinger bands, moving-average convergence divergence, and the relative strength index. The tftools command is used with four subcommands, each referring to a technical analysis tool: bollingerbands, macd, movingaverage, and rsi. We provide examples for each tool. tftools allows researchers to backtest their own investment strategies and will be of interest to investors, researchers, and students of finance.

The sexual orientation wage gap in the USA

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature of the wage gap between genders and sexual orientation. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses OLS on pooled repeated cross-sections. Findings The differences in wages between gay/straight men and women mirror what would be expected from labor force attachment more so than direct heterosexism. Research limitations/implications The authors use a functional definition of sexual preference that reflects whether the respondent had sex with someone of the same gender in the same year. It does not ask whether the person identifies publicly as gay/lesbian/bisexual. Originality/value The authors verify and extend earlier findings on the sexual orientation and gendered wage gap.

The Neighborhood Impact of Airbnb on New Orleans

Rental prices have been increasing throughout the country for the last several years. While New Orleans is no exception to this trend, rental rates have decreased in most area zip codes in the last six months. In the meantime, vacancy rates have been fairly constant at their average rates. In this study, we investigate whether any increases in New Orleans’ rental rates are correlated to Airbnb activity, or whether they are part of overall trends in prices. For each zip code in New Orleans, we investigated whether changes in rental prices are correlated with changes in Airbnb activity, after controlling for regional rental rate changes (outside New Orleans). We were unable to find any scientifically valid evidence that rental rates and Airbnb presence are correlated, and conclude that Airbnb has no discernible impact on rents in any of New Orleans’ zip codes.