Mark N. Harris

Modelling the Impact of Environmental Regulations on Bilateral Trade Flows: OECD, 1990–1996

Since the early seventies an increasing attention has been paid to the impact environmental policy has on foreign trade. One of the most important issues is whether countries with relatively strict environmental regulat ions tend to experience a deterioration of international competitiveness and thus a fall in the exports, and a rise in the imports, of t he pollution-intensive commodities or, on the other hand, benefit from the improvement in environmental quality and are likely to develop new comparative advantages in the environmentally more sensitive industries. So far, most empirical studies have concluded that the proportion of environmental costs to the total production costs is still so marginal that environmental policies have hardly any effect on comparative advantage patterns and thus on foreign trade. One of the few exceptions is Van Beers and Van den Bergh (1997), who found that stricter regulat ions have some negative impact on bilateral trade flows between OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to show that t his outcome is part ly due to model mis-specification. The analysis is based on a triple indexed fixed-effects model and on its variants. It is found that, as so on as both t he importing and exporting country specific effects are taken into consideration, the relationship between stricter regulations and foreign trade becomes statist ically insignificant. This suggests that environmental costs do not have a real impact, neither negative nor positive, on foreign trade.

Determinants of Household Saving in Australia

This paper uses a unique survey of consumers to test several separate but inter-related hypotheses of household saving. Unit records from 17,585 Australian households are available, which enables the incorporation of a range of household characteristics that may be important factors for saving behaviour, but which are not typically available to researchers undertaking macroeconomic analyses. An ordered probit estimation method is used, and the results support the view that current incomes are perhaps the most important determinant of saving. However, it can also be seen that demographics and householders level of economic optimism play a key role.

Benchmarking firm performance

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to provide a framework for benchmarking firm performance (profitability) using panel data. Further, to illustrate how the estimation results can be used for simulation (what if?) exercises.Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply the econometric techniques used in panel data to estimate profit functions, thereby enabling us to compute measures of firm efficiencies which can subsequently be used as benchmarking tools.Findings – The results suggest that both large firms and those highly specialised, enjoy higher profit margins, whereas the more capital intensive a firm is, the lower is its profitability. As with previous studies there is strong evidence of the U‐shaped relationship between market share and profitability. The authors present an analysis of the distribution of firm efficiencies across industries as a whole, and by a number of industry groups.Research limitations/implications – Only a limited sample (with regard to the time span) of Australian firms is ...

A Monte Carlo Study of Tests for the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Property

A plethora of tests for the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) property of Logit models of discrete choice behavior has been proposed in the literature. These tests are based upon asymptotic arguments and little is known about their size and power properties in finite samples. This paper uses a Monte Carlo simulation study to investigate the size and power properties of six tests for IIA in the multinomial Logit model. Our results show that the majority of tests based upon partitioning the choice set appear to have very poor size and power properties in small samples. Tests for IIA based upon the DOGIT model, similarly have poor size properties, but in some circumstances do have reasonable power properties.

Inflation and Growth: Some Theory and Evidence

The paper presents a monetary model of endogenous growth and specifies an econometric model consistent with it. The economic model suggests a negative inflation-growth effect, and one that is stronger at lower levels of inflation. Empirical evaluation of the model is based on a large panel of OECD and APEC member countries over the years 1961-1997. The hypothesized negative inflation effect is found comprehensively for the OECD countries to be significant and, as in the theory, to increase marginally as the inflation rate falls. For APEC countries, the results from using instrumental variables also show significant evidence of a similar behavior.

Growth convergence: some panel data evidence

This paper implements a panel data approach of the Solow model to study the phenomenon of growth convergence for 22 OECD countries. It shows that although the derived estimable Solow model is probably underspecified from an econometric point of view, it is still possible to conclude that there is a likely convergence to a steady state rate of about 2-4%.

Simulating the Behavioural Effects of Welfare Reforms among Sole Parents in Australia

This paper derives and estimates an econometric model of labour supply among sole parents in Australia, using modelling techniques which treat the labour supply decision as a utility maximising choice between a given number of discrete states. The model is then used to look at the likely effects of actual and hypothetical welfare policy reforms. Model estimates are based upon net incomes generated by the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator (MITTS), developed at the Melbourne Institute in collaboration with the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS).

The Effect of Inflation on Growth: Evidence from a Panel of Transition Countries

The paper examines the effect of inflation on growth in transition countries. It presents panel data evidence for 13 transition countries over the 1990–2003 period; it uses a fixed effects panel approach to account for possible bias from correlations among the unobserved effects and the observed country heterogeneity. The results find a strong, robust, negative effect on growth of inflation or its standard deviation, and one that appears to decline in magnitude as the inflation rate increases, as seen for OECD countries. And the results include a role for a normalized money demand in affecting growth, as well as for a convergence variable, a trade variable and a government share variable. Robustness of the baseline single-equation model is examined by expanding this into a three-equation simultaneous system of output growth, inflation and money demand that allows for possible simultaneity bias in the baseline model.

Testing for Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Some Empirical Results

In a recent article, Zhang and Hoffman discuss the use of discrete choice logit models in sociological research. In the present article, the authors estimate a multinomial logit model of U.K. Magistrates Courts sentencing using a data set collected by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO) and test the independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) property using six tests. Conducting the tests with the appropriate large sample critical values, the authors find that the acceptance or rejection of IIA depends both on which test and which variant of a given test is used. The authors then use simulation techniques to assess the size and power performance of the tests. The empirical example is revisited with the inferences performed using empirical critical values obtained by simulation, and the resultant inferences are compared. The results show that empirical workers should exercise caution when testing for IIA.

Modelling firm innovation using panel probit estimators

Firm-level innovation is investigated using three probit panel estimators, which control for unobserved heterogeneity, and a standard probit estimator. Results indicate the standard probit model is misspecified and that inter-firm networks are important for innovation.