A Revealed-Preference Approach to Measuring Information Frictions in Migration Decisions

 

 

Eduardo Morales.

(Princeton University).

A Revealed-Preference Approach to Measuring Information Frictions in Migration Decisions.

Abstract
«Labor demand shocks differ widely across regions within countries. Yet, migration patterns often do not respond to these regional shocks. Are workers’ limited migration responses due to lack of information about the potential net gains from regional migration? To answer this question, we analyze the mobility decisions of all formally employed workers in Brazil over 15 years. First, using a reduced-form approach, we document heterogeneous delay in reaction to positive local labor demand shocks: workers living in more distant regions and in regions with a lower degree of internet penetration tend to react more slowly to positive local labor demand shocks happening in other regions within the same country. Second, using a structural approach, we use model-based moment conditions and tests of overidentifying restrictions to test for the content of migrants’ information sets. Our preliminary results indicate that the precision of the information that workers have about labor market conditions in regions other than their region of residence decays strongly with distance. Agents located in regions with a better access to internet also appear to have more precise information.”

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Detecting deviations from stationarity of functional time series.

Alexander Aue.

(UC Davis).

 

Detecting deviations from stationarity of functional time series.

Abstract:

 

The advent of complex data has led to increased research in virtually all areas of statistics, including functional data analysis (FDA). Within the purview of FDA, the use of methods for serially correlated functions is often prudent. As for simpler univariate time series models, the theoretical foundations of methodology are often laid exploiting the notion of stationarity, while data analysis is often conducted on data violating this assumption. This talks looks into ways of discovering departures from stationarity in two ways. In the first part, structural breaks are considered, such that the sample is split into segments in a non-smooth fashion. The methodology to be presented does not rely on the usual dimension reduction techniques, which might be advantageous if the structural break is not sparse (that is, not concentrated within the primary modes of variation of the data). In the second part, local stationarity is introduced as a smooth deviation from stationarity. Here methods in the frequency domain are considered, based on the general result that (second-order) stationarity is equivalent to a functional version of the peridogram being uncorrelated at the Fourier frequencies. Both sets of methods are illustrated with annual Australian temperature profiles. The talk is based on joint work with Anne van Delft (Bochum), Greg Rice (Waterloo) and Ozan Sönmez (Davis).

 

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