The Long-Term Effect of the Timing of Fertility Decline on Population Size

Existing long-range population projections imply that the timing of the fertility transition has a relatively unimportant effect on long-term population size when compared with the impact of the level at which fertility is assumed eventually to stabilize. However, this note shows that the effect of the timing of fertility decline is a function of the eventual fertility rate: the lower the eventual fertility rate, the greater the effect of the timing of the transition becomes. This finding has important implications for projection methodology, as well as for policies related to the consequences of long-term levels of population size.     

Is the Demographic Dividend an Education Dividend?

The effect of changes in age structure on economic growth has been widely studied in the demography and population economics literature. The beneficial effect of changes in age structure after a decrease in fertility has become known as the “demographic dividend.” In this article, we reassess the empirical evidence on the associations among economic growth, changes in age structure, labor force participation, and educational attainment. Using a global panel of countries, we find that after the effect of human capital dynamics is controlled for, no evidence exists that changes in age structure affect labor productivity. Our results imply that improvements in educational attainment are the key to explaining productivity and income growth and that a substantial portion of the demographic dividend is an education dividend.     

The role of privacy concerns in the sharing economy

Internet-mediated sharing is growing quickly. Millions of users around the world share personal services and possessions with others ? often complete strangers. Shared goods can amount to substantial financial and immaterial value. Despite this, little research has investigated privacy in the sharing economy. To fill this gap, we examine the sharing–privacy nexus by exploring the privacy threats associated with Internet-mediated sharing. Given the popularity of sharing services, users seem quite willing to share goods and services despite the compounded informational and physical privacy threats associated with such sharing. We develop and test a framework for analyzing the effect of privacy concerns on sharing that considers institutional and social privacy threats, trust and social-hedonic as well as monetary motives.     

Does umbrella branding really work? Investigating cross-category brand loyalty

Numerous studies on the drivers of brand extension success found evidence that parent-brand characteristics and the fit between parent brand and transfer product are the main and most influential factors driving brand extension success. However, the ability of a brand to transfer its brand loyal customers from the parent to the extension category has been widely neglected. Brand loyalty can be regarded as a consequence of the underlying assumption of customers transferring their quality perceptions, their brand knowledge, and their experience with the brand from one category to the other. We find empirical evidence that consumers who are loyal to the brand in the leading (parent) product category show a higher probability to be loyal to that same brand in another (extension) category compared to those consumers who are not loyal in the leading category. Moreover, as the overall success of the extension includes positive retroactive effects of the extension product on the parent product or brand, the arising question is whether there are differences between extension product categories regarding their attachment to the parent category and their ability to stimulate brand loyal purchases in the parent category, i.e., speaking of ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ categories in terms of brand loyal purchase behavior. This might even hold true for the relationship of any two categories the brand competes.     

Least squares and shrinkage estimation under bimonotonicity constraints

In this paper we describe active set type algorithms for minimization of a smooth function under general order constraints, an important case being functions on the set of bimonotone r×s matrices. These algorithms can be used, for instance, to estimate a bimonotone regression function via least squares or (a smooth approximation of) least absolute deviations. Another application is shrinkage estimation in image denoising or, more generally, regression problems with two ordinal factors after representing the data in a suitable basis which is indexed by pairs (i,j)∈{1,…,r}×{1,…,s}. Various numerical examples illustrate our methods.     

Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil

We construct a monthly real-time dataset consisting of vintages for 1991.1–2010.12 that is suitable for generating forecasts of the real price of oil from a variety of models. We document that revisions of the data typically represent news, and we introduce backcasting and nowcasting techniques to fill gaps in the real-time data. We show that real-time forecasts of the real price of oil can be more accurate than the no-change forecast at horizons up to 1 year. In some cases, real-time mean squared prediction error (MSPE) reductions may be as high as 25% 1 month ahead and 24% 3 months ahead. This result is in striking contrast to related results in the literature for asset prices. In particular, recursive vector autoregressive (VAR) forecasts based on global oil market variables tend to have lower MSPE at short horizons than forecasts based on oil futures prices, forecasts based on autoregressive (AR) and autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models, and the no-change forecast. In addition, these VAR models have consistently higher directional accuracy.     

Only English by the third generation? Loss and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary immigrants

We investigate whether a three-generation model of linguistic assimilation, known from previous waves of immigration, can be applied to the descendants of contemporary immigrant groups. Using the 5% Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample 1990 file, we examine the home languages of second- and third-generation children and compare the degree of their language shift against that among the descendants of European immigrants, as evidenced in the 1940 and 1970 censuses. Overall, the rates of speaking only English for a number of contemporary groups suggest that Anglicization is occurring at roughly the same pace for Asians as it did for Europeans, but is slower among the descendants of Spanish speakers. Multivariate models for three critical groups--Chinese, Cubans, and Mexicans--indicate that the home languages of third-generation children are most affected by factors, such as intermarriage, that determine the languages spoken by adults and by the communal context.