0000000000268152
AUTHOR
Christopher F. Parmeter
showing 9 related works from this author
Clustering and Polarization in the Distribution of Output: A Multivariate Perspective.
2013
Abstract Modeling the cross-country distribution of per capita income using mixture analysis provides a natural platform for the detection of clubs of countries. Unfortunately, these mixture methods, when based on a strictly univariate approach are limiting towards one’s ability to learn about the underlying process of the emergence of what constitutes a club. This paper takes a fresh look at the constitution of the emerging clubs in the distribution of cross-country output using bivariate and multivariate mixture analysis. Our results suggest that clubs are also forming in the main Solowian determinants of economic growth.
Governance and Scope Economies in Microfinance Institutions
2013
This paper studies the relation between board size and composition and cost savings (scope economies) from combining savings mobilization and lending by Microfinance Institutions. The findings support the hypothesis that employee representation on the board is associated with positive scope economies, possibly due to internal knowledge. However, CEO Chairman duality is associated with equal or larger probability of scope diseconomies, which is consistent with previous findings. Representation of other stakeholders on the MFI board does not affect scope economies. The results seem to support the notion that, in highly uncertain environments, group cohesion may be an advantageous mechanism of…
Should all microfinance institutions mobilize microsavings? Evidence from economies of scope
2014
Published version of an article from the journal: Empirical Economics. Also available from the publisher on SpringetLink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00181-014-0861-3 We extend a recently developed generalized local polynomial estimator into a semiparametric smooth coefficient framework to estimate a generalized cost function. The advantage of the generalized local polynomial approach is that we can simultaneously choose the degree of polynomial for each continuous nonparametric regressor and the bandwidths via data-driven methods. We provide estimates of scope economies from the joint production of microloans and microdeposits for a dataset of Microfinance Institutions from over 50 countrie…
Evolution of the Global Distribution of Carbon Dioxide: A Finite Mixture Analysis
2015
Economists and environmental policymakers have recently begun advocating a bottom-up approach to climate change mitigation, focusing on reduction targets for groups of nations, rather than large scale global policies. We advance this discussion by taking a quantitative perspective, focusing on econometric identification of groups of countries that have statistically similar distributions of carbon emissions using a broad range of finite mixture models. Nearly all of our results yield a consistent pattern: after 1980, there are two distinct emissions distributions, and that these distributions continue to evolve over time. We provide a rigorous analysis of these distributional differences al…
Labor Productivity Growth: Disentangling Technology and Capital Accumulation
2014
We adopt a counterfactual approach to decompose labor productivity growth into growth of Technological Productivity (TEP), growth of the capital-labor ratio and growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). We bring the decomposition to the data using international countrysectoral information spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s and a nonparametric generalized kernel method, which enables us to estimate the production function allowing for heterogeneity across all relevant dimensions: countries, sectors and time. As well as documenting substantial heterogeneity across countries and sectors, we nd average TEP to account for about 44% of labor productivity growth and TEP gaps with respect to the…
GDP clustering: A reappraisal
2012
Abstract This note explores clustering in cross country GDP per capita using recently developed model based clustering methods for panel data. Previous research characterizing the components of the overall distribution of output either use ad hoc methods, or methods which ignore/subvert the panel nature of the data. These new methods allow the characterization of the possible autoregressive relationship of output between time points. We show that traditional static clustering decade by decade gives mixed results regarding clustering over time, while the application of longitudinal mixtures presents three distinct clusters at all periods of time.
Decomposing changes in the conditional variance of GDP over time
2017
A well established fact in the growth empirics literature is the increasing (unconditional) variation in output per capita across countries. We propose a nonparametric decomposition of the conditional variation of output per capita across countries to capture different channels over which the variation might be increasing. We find that OECD countries have experienced diminishing conditional variation while other regions have experienced increasing conditional variation. Our decomposition suggests that most of these changes in the conditional variance of output are due to unobserved factors not accounted for by the traditional growth determinants. In addition to this we show that these facto…
Skill Biased Technical Change and Misallocation: A Unified Framework
2019
Due to strict reliance on competitive labor markets, standard approaches which measure skill biased technical change (SBTC) conflate labor market distortions which prevent firms from choosing the efficient ratio between skilled and unskilled labor and `true' SBTC. This contrasts with recent evidence on decoupling between wages and productivity. To overcome this limitation, we present a unified framework to estimate SBTC which accounts for factor accumulation (FA) effects, and quantifies the discrepancy (i.e., relative misallocation) between the wage ratio (skilled to unskilled) and the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS). The suggested methodology takes advantage of recent develo…
Governance and scope economies in microfinance institutions
2013
This paper studies the relation between board size and composition and cost savings (scope economies) from combining savings mobilisation and lending by Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). The findings support the hypothesis that employee representation on the board is associated with positive scope economies, possibly due to internal knowledge. However, CEO-Chairman duality is associated with equal or larger probability of scope diseconomies, which is consistent with previous findings. Representation