There are 1332 items in this version of the glossary, dated November 27, 2005. Copyright 1997-2005, Peter B. Meyer.

2SLS: an abbreviation for two stage least squares, an instrumental variables estimation technique.

Contexts: econometrics; estimation

3SLS: A kind of simultaneous equations estimation. Made up of 2SLS followed by SUR. First proposed by Zellner and Theil, Econometrica, 1962, pp 54-78.

Contexts: econometrics; estimation

a fortiori: Latin for "even stronger". Can be used to compare two theorems or proofs. Could be interpreted to mean "in the same way."

Contexts: phrases

a priori:
It is always used in the phrase "a priori" often shown in italics because it is not English, but comes from Latin. In the economics context "a priori" means "it is assumed in advance". It means: "we think it is logical that . . . " or "we had to assume something, and we assumed this, without evidence." The writer is also implying "I do not cite evidence here because I do not know it or do not wish to discuss it." I do not know why they do not say this in English. It may come from the formal logic of proof in mathematics, developed over hundreds of years by people who knew Latin. It may have also a more precise meaning than I said there but I am sure this is clear enough to help. Or maybe they like "a priori" because it is so short.

Contexts: phrases

A-D equilibrium:
abbreviation for Arrow-Debreu equilibrium.


AAEA: American Agricultural Economics Association. See their web site at http://www.aaea.org.


abnormal returns: Used in the context of stock returns; means the return to a portfolio in excess of the return to a market portfolio. Contrast excess returns which means something else. Note that abnormal returns can be negative.
Example: Suppose average market return to a stock was 10% for some calendar year, meaning stocks overall were 10% higher at the end of the year than at the beginning, and suppose that stock S had risen 12% in that period. Then stock S's abnormal return was 2%.

Contexts: finance

absolute risk aversion: An attribute of a utility function. See Arrow-Pratt measure.

Contexts: micro theory; finance

absorptive capacity: A limit to the rate or quantity of scientific or technological information that a firm can absorb. If such limits exist they provide one explanation for firms to develop internal R&D capacities. R&D departments can not only conduct development along lines they are already familiar with, but they have formal training and external professional connections that make it possible for them to evaluate and incorporate externally generated technical knowledge into the firm better than others in the firm can. In other words a partial explanation for R&D investments by firms is to work around the absorptive capacity constraint.

This term comes from Cohen and Levinthal (1990).

Source: Cohen W., and D. Levinthal. 1990. "Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation." Administrative Science Quarterly 35(1) pp 128-152.
Contexts: IO; organizations; theory of the firm

abstracting from:
a phrase that generally means "leaving out". A model abstracts from some elements of the real world in its demonstration of some specific force.

Contexts: phrases

accelerator principle:
That it is the growth of output that induces continuing net investment. That is, net investment is a function of the change in output not its level.

Source: Branson
Contexts: macro

acceptance region:
Occurs in the context of hypothesis testing. Let T be a test statistic. Possible values of T can be divided into two regions, the acceptance region and the rejection region. If the value of T comes out to be in the acceptance region, the null hypothesis being tested is not rejected. If T falls in the rejection region, the null hypothesis is rejected.

The terms 'acceptance region' and 'rejection region' may also refer to the subsets of the sample space that would produce statistics T in the acceptance region or rejection region as defined above.

Source: Davidson and MacKinnon, 1993, p 78-79
Contexts: econometrics; statistics; estimation

ACIR: Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations, in the U.S.

Contexts: organizations

active measures:
In the context of combating unemployment: policies designed to improve the access of the unemployed to the labor market and jobs, job-related skills, and the functioning of the labor market. Contrast passive measures.

Source: John P. Martin, D16 readings book
Contexts: labor; macro

adapted: The stochastic process {Xt} and information sets {Yt} are adapted if {Xt} is a martingale difference sequence with respect to {Yt}.

Contexts: statistics; econometrics

AEA: American Economics Association


AER:
An abbreviation for the American Economic Review.

Contexts: journals

affiliated:
From Milgrom and Weber (Econometrica, 1982, page 1096): Bidders' valuations of a good being auctioned are affiliated if, roughly: "a high value of one bidder's estimate makes high values of the others' estimates more likely."

There may well be good reasons not to use the word
correlated in place of affiliated. This editor is advised that there is some mathematical difference.

Source: Milgrom and Weber, Econometrica, 1982, p 1096.
Contexts: auctions; micro theory; modelling

affine: adjective, describing a function with a constant slope. Distinguished from linear which sometimes is meant to imply that the function has no constant term; that it is zero when the independent variables are zero. An affine function may have a nonzero value when the independent variables are zero.
Examples: y = 2x is linear in x, whereas y = 2x + 7 is an affine function of x.
And y = 2x + z2 is affine in x but not in z.

Contexts: real analysis

affine pricing: A pricing schedule where there is a fixed cost or benefit to the consumer for buying more than zero, and a constant per-unit cost per unit beyond that. Formally, the mapping from quantity purchased to total price is an affine function of quantity.
Using, mostly, Tirole's notation, let q be the quantity in units purchased, T(q) be the total price paid, p be a constant price per unit, and k be the fixed cost, an example of an affine price schedule is T(q)=k+pq.
For alternative ways of pricing see
linear pricing schedule and nonlinear pricing.

Source: Tirole, p 136
Contexts: IO

AFQT: Armed Forces Qualifications(?) Test -- a test given to new recruits in the U.S. armed forces. Results from this test are used in regressions of labor market outcomes on possible causes of those outcomes, to control for other causes.

Contexts: data; labor

AGI: An abbreviation for Adjusted Gross Income, a line item which appears on the U.S. taxpayer's tax return and is sometimes used as a measure of income which is consistent across taxpayers. AGI does not include any accounting for deductions from income that reduce the tax due, e.g. for family size.

Contexts: public finance; labor

agricultural economics:
"Agricultural Economics is an applied social science that deals with how producers, consumers, and societies use scarce resources in the production, processing, marketing, and consumption of food and fiber products." (from Penson, Capps, and Rosson (1996), as cited by Hallam 1998).

Source: Penson, Capps, and Rosson, 1996; Hallam, 1998
Contexts: agricultural economics; fields

AIC:
abbreviation for Akaike's Information Criterion

Contexts: econometrics; time series; estimation

AJS: An abbreviation for the American Journal of Sociology.

Contexts: journals

Akaike's Information Criterion:
A criterion for selecting among nested econometric models. The AIC is a number associated with each model:
AIC=ln (sm2) + 2m/T
where m is the number of parameters in the model, and sm2 is (in an AR(m) example) the estimated residual variance: sm2 = (sum of squared residuals for model m)/T. That is, the average squared residual for model m.
The criterion may be minimized over choices of m to form a tradeoff between the fit of the model (which lowers the sum of squared residuals) and the model's complexity, which is measured by m. Thus an AR(m) model versus an AR(m+1) can be compared by this criterion for a given batch of data.
An equivalent formulation is this one: AIC=T ln(RSS) + 2K where K is the number of regressors, T the number of obserations, and RSS the residual sum of squares; minimize over K to pick K.

Source: Watson's compressed notes, p. 23; RATS maual pg. 5-18
Contexts: econometrics; time series

alienation: A Marxist term. Alienation is the subjugation of people by the artificial creations of people "which have assumed the guise of independent things." Because products are thought of as commodities with money prices, the social process of trade and exchange becomes driven by forces operating independently of human will like natural laws.


almost surely:
With probability one. In particular, the statement that a series {Wn} limits to W as n goes to infinity, means that Pr{Wn->W}=1.

Contexts: probability; statistics; econometrics

alternative hypothesis:
"The hypothesis that the restriction or set of restrictions to be tested does NOT hold." Often denoted H1. Synonym for 'maintained hypothesis.'

Source: Davidson and MacKinnon, 1993, p 78-79
Contexts: econometrics; statistics; estimation

Americanist:
A member of a certain subfield of political science.

Contexts: political science

AMEX:
American Stock Exchange, which is in New York City

Contexts: organizations

aML:
A programming language/environment for maximum likelihood estimation, allowing complicated error specifications. Their web site.

Contexts: estimation

Amos: A statistical data analysis program, discussed at http://www.smallwaters.com/amos.

Contexts: data

analytic: Often means 'algebraic', as opposed to 'numeric'. E.g., in the context of taking a derivative, which could sometimes be calculated numerically on a computer, but is usually done analytically by finding an algebraic expression for the derivative.

Contexts: phrases

annihilator operator:
Denoted []+ with a lag operator polynomial in the brackets. Has the effect of removing the terms with an L to a negative power; that is, future values in the expression. Their expected value is assumed to be zero by whoever applies the operator.

Contexts: models

Annuity formula: If annuity payments over time are (0,P,P,...P) for n periods, and the constant interest rate r>0, then the net present value to the recipient of the annuity can be calculated this way: NPV(A) = (1-(1+r)-n)P/r

Contexts: finance

ANOVA:
Stands for analysis-of-variance, a statistical model meant to analyze data. Generally the variables in an ANOVA analysis are categorical, not continuous. The term main effect is used in the ANOVA context. The main effect of x seems to mean the result of an F test to see if the different categories of x have any detectable effect on the dependent variable on average.

ANOVA is used often in sociology, but rarely in economics as far as this editor can tell. The terms ANCOVA and ANOCOVA mean analysis-of-covariance.

From Kennedy, 3rd edition, pp226-227: "Analysis of variance is a statistical technique designed to determine whether or not a particular classification of the data is meaningful. The total variation of the dependent variable (the sum of squared differences between each observation and the overall mean) can be expressed as the sum of the variation between classes (the sum of the squared differences between the mean of each class and the overall mean, each times the number of observations in that class) and the variation within each class (the sum of the squared difference between each observation and its class mean). This decomposition is used to structure an F test to test the hypothesis that the between-class variation is large relative to the within-class variation, which implies that the classification is meaningful, i.e., that there is a significant variation in the dependent variable between classes. If dummy variables are used the capture these classifications and a regression is run, the dummy variable coefficients turn out to be the class means, the between-class variation is the regression's "explained" variation, the within-class variation is the regression's "unexplained" variation, and the analysis of variance F test is equivalent to testing whether or not the dummy variable coefficients are significantly different from one another. The main advantage of the dummy variable regression is that it provides estimates of he magnitudes of class variation influences on the dependent variables (as well as testing whether or not the classification is meaningful).

"Analysis of covariance is an extension of analysis of variance to handle cases in which there are some uncontrolled variables that could not be standardized between classes. These cases can be analyzed by using dummy variables to capture the classifications and regressing the dependent variable on these dummies and the uncontrollable variables. The analysis of covariance F tests are equivalent to testing whether the coefficient of the dummies are significantly different from one another. These tests can be interpreted in terms of changes in the residual sums of squares caused by adding the dummy variables. Johnston (1972, pp 192-207) has a good discussion."

Kennedy also says: "In light of the above, it can be concluded that anyone comfortable with regression analysis and dummy variables can eschew analysis of variance and covariance techniques." [But one needs to understand the academic work out there, not just write one's own. -ed.]

Source: Stata manuals; Kennedy, 1992
Contexts: statistics; sociology

APT:
Arbitrage Pricing Theory; from Stephen Ross, 1976-78. Quoting Sargent, "Ross posited a particular statistical process for asset returns, then derived the restrictions on the process that are implied by the hypothesis that there exist no arbitrage possibilities."

The APT includes multiple risk factors, unlike the
CAPM.

Source: Sargent, 1987, p 112; Ross, 1976
Contexts: finance; models

AR: Stands for "autoregressive." Describes a stochastic process (denote here, et) that can be described by a weighted sum of its previous values and a white noise error. An AR(1) process is a first-order one, meaning that only the immediately previous value has a direct effect on the current value:
et = ret-1 + ut
where r is a constant that has absolute value less than one, and ut is drawn from a distribution with mean zero and finite variance, often a normal distribution.
An AR(2) would have the form:
et = r1et-1 + r2et-2 + ut
and so on. In theory a process might be represented by an AR(infinity).

Contexts: time series; econometrics; statistics

AR(1): A first-order autoregressive process. See AR for details.

Contexts: statistics

ARCH: Stands for Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity. It's a technique used in finance to model asset price volatility over time. It is observed in much time series data on asset prices that there are periods when variance is high and periods where variance is low. The ARCH econometric model for this (introduced by Engle (1982)) is that the variance of the series itself is an AR (autoregressive) time series, often a linear one.
Formally, per Bollerslev et al 1992 and Engle (1982): An ARCH model is a discrete time stochastic process {et} of the form: et = ztst
where the zt's are iid over time, E(zt)=0, var(zt)=1, and st is positive and time-varying. Usually st is further modeled to be an autoregressive process.

According to Andersen and Bollerslev 1995/6/7, "ARCH models are usually estimated by maximum likelihood techniques." They almost always give a
leptokurtic distrbution of asset returns even if one assumes that each period's returns are normal, because the variance is not the same each period. Even ARCH models, however, do not usually generate enough kurtosis in equity returns to match U.S. stock data.

Source: Engle, 1982
Contexts: finance; statistics; time series

ARIMA: Describes a stochastic process or a model of one. Stands for "autoregressive integrated moving-average". An ARIMA process is made up of sums of autoregressive and moving-average components, and may not be stationary.

Source: Enders, 1996, p 23
Contexts: time series; econometrics

ARMA: Describes a stochastic process or a model of one. Stands for "autoregressive moving-average". An ARMA process is a stationary one made up of sums of autoregressive and moving-average components.

Source: Enders, 1996, p 23
Contexts: time series; econometrics

Arrovian uncertainty: Measurable risk, that is, measurable variation in possible outcomes, on the basis of knowledge or believed assumptions in advance. Contrast Knightian uncertainty.

Source: Used in Rosenberg (1996) in Mosaic of Economic Growth.

Arrow-Debreu equilibrium: Means, in practice, competitive equilibrium of the kind shown in Debreu's Theory of Value.
The Arrow-Debreu reference may be to a particular paper: "Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy", Econometrica. Vol 22 July 1954, pp 265-290. I haven't checked that out.

Source: Debreu; Arrow and Debreu, 1954

Arrow-Pratt measure:
An attribute of a utility function.

Denote a utility function by u(c). The Arrow-Pratt measure of absolute risk aversion is defined by:
RA=-u''(c)/u'(c)
This is a measure of the curvature of the utility function. This measure is invariant to affine transformation of the utility function, which is a useful attributed because such transformation do not affect the preferences expressed by u().

If RA() is decreasing in c, then u() displays decreasing absolute risk aversion. If RA() is increasing in c, then u() displays increasing absolute risk aversion. If RA() is constant with respect to changes in c, then u() displays constant absolute risk aversion.

Source: Huang and Litzenberger, 1988, p 21; for Arrow (1970) and Pratt (1964).
Contexts: finance; micro theory

ASQ:
An abbreviation for the journal Administrative Science Quarterly which tends to be closer to sociology than to economics.

Contexts: journals

ASR:
An abbreviation for the journal American Sociological Review.

Contexts: journals

asset pricing models:
A way of mapping from abstract states of the world into the prices of financial assets like stocks and bonds. The prices are always conceived of as endogenous; that is, the states of the world cause them, not the other way around, in an asset pricing model.
Several general types are discussed in the research literature. The
CAPM is one, distinguished from three that Fama (1991) identifies: (a) the Sharpe-Lintner-Black class of models, (b) the multifactor models like the APT of Ross (1976), and (c) the consumption based models such as Lucas (1978).
An asset pricing model might or might not include the possibility of fads or bubbles.

Source: Fama, 1991, p 1590-1599
Contexts: finance

asset-pricing function: maps the state of the economy at time t into the price of a capital asset at time t.

Source: Sargent, 1987, Ch 3
Contexts: macro; finance; models

asymptotic:
An adjective meaning 'of a probability distribution as some variable or parameter of it (usually, the size of the sample from another distribution) goes to infinity.'
In particular, see
asymptotic distribution.

Contexts: econometrics

asymptotic normality: A limiting distribution of an estimator is usually normal. (details!)

This is usually proven with a mean value expansion of the score at the estimated parameter value? (details)


asymptotic variance:
Definition of the asymptotic variance of an estimator may vary from author to author or situation to situation. One standard definition is given in Greene, p 109, equation (4-39) and is described there as "sufficient for nearly all applications." It's

asy var(t_hat) = (1/n) * limn->infinity E[ {t_hat - limn->infinity E[t_hat] }2 ]

Source: Greene, 1993, p 109
Contexts: econometrics

asymptotically equivalent:
Estimators are asymptotically equivalent if they have the same asymptotic distribution.

Contexts: econometrics

asymptotically unbiased: "There are at least three possible definitions of asymptotic unbiasedness:
1. The mean of the limiting distribution of n.5(t_hat - t) is zero.
2. limn->infinity E[t_hat] = t.
3. plim t_hat = t."
Usually an estimator will have all three of these or none of them. Cases exist however in which left hand sides of those three are different. "There is no general agreement among authors as to the precise meaning of asymptotic unbiasedness, perhaps because the term is misleading at the outset; asymptotic refers to an approximation, while unbiasedness is an exact result. Nonetheless the majority view seems to be that (2) is the proper definition of asymptotic unbiasedness. Note, though, that this definition relies upon quantities that are generally unknown and that may not exist." -- Greene, p 107

Source: Greene, 1993, p 107
Contexts: econometrics

attractor:
a kind of steady state in a dynamical system. There are three types of attractor: stable steady states, cyclical attractors, and chaotic attractors.

Source: J. Montgomery, social networks paper
Contexts: macro; models

augmented Dickey-Fuller test: A test for a unit root in a time series sample. An augmented Dickey-Fuller test is a version of the Dickey-Fuller test for a larger and more complicated set of time series models.

(Ed.: what follows is only my best understanding.) The augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) statistic, used in the test, is a negative number. The more negative it is, the stronger the rejection of the hypothesis that there is a unit root at some level of confidence. In one example, with three lags, a value of -3.17 constituted rejection at the p-value of .10.

Source: Greene, 1997
With thanks to: Don Watson (as of 1999/03/31: drw@matilda.vm.edu.au)
Contexts: econometrics; time series

Austrian economics: A school of thought which "takes as its central concern the problem of human coordination, through which order emerges not from a dictator, but from the decisions and judgments of numerous individuals in a world of highly disperced and sometimes only tacit knowledge." -- Cass R. Sunstein, "The Road from Serfdom" The New Republic Oct 20, 1997, p 42.

Well-known authors along this line include Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek. See
Deborah L. Walker's essay for a clear account.

Source: Walker's essay at http://econlib.org/library/Enc/AustrianEconomics.html
Contexts: political

autarky: The state of an individual who does not trade with anyone.

Contexts: modelling

autocorrelation:
the jth autocorrelation of a covariance-stationary process is defined as its jth autocovariance divided by its variance.

In a sample, the kth autocorrelation is the OLS estimate that results from the regression of the data on the kth lags of the data.

Below is Gauss code to calculate autocorrelations from a sample.
/* This functions calculates autocorrelation estimates for lag k */
proc autocor(series, k);
  local rowz,y,x,rho;
  rowz = rows(series);
  y = series[k+1:rowz];
  x = series[1:rowz-k];
  rho = inv(x'x)*x'y;            /* compute autocorrelation by OLS */
  retp(rho);
endp;


Contexts: econometrics; time series

autocovariance: The jth autocovariance of a stochastic process yt is the covariance between its time t value and the value at time t-j. It is denoted g below, and E[] means expectation, or mean:
gjt = E[(yt - Ey)(yt-j-Ey)]

In that equation the process is assumed to be covariance stationary. If there is a trend, then the second Ey should be E(yt-j).

Contexts: econometrics; time series

autocovariance matrix: Defined for a vector random process, denoted yt here. The ij'th element of the autocovariance matrix is cov(yit, yj,t-k).

Contexts: econometrics; time series

autoregressive process: See AR.

Contexts: econometrics; statistics; time series

avar: abbreviation or symbol for the operation of taking the asymptotic variance of an expression, thus: avar().

Contexts: econometrics

average treatment effect: In a treatment model where some observations receive the treatment (for example, a training program) and some do not, the average treatment effect is the difference between the conditional expectation of the dependent variable with the treatment effect and the conditional expectation of the dependent variable without the treatment effect. This is the average benefit from the treatment.

Often this term is abbreviated ATE.

Source: source: John Pencavel, lecture notes for Econ 247, Stanford University, circa 2000-2005.
Contexts: estimation; labor

b:
b(n,q) is notation for a binomial distribution with parameters n and q, where n is the number of draws and q is the probability that each is a one; the value of X~b(n,q) is a count of the number of ones drawn.

Contexts: statistics

B1: B1 denotes the Borel sigma-algebra of the real line. It will contain every open interval by definition, which implies that it contains every closed interval and every countable union of open, half-open, and closed intervals. What won't it contain? In practice, only obscure sets. Here's an example: Define the equivalence class ~ on the real line such that x~y (read: x is in the same equivalence class as y) if x-y is a rational number. Now consider the set of all numbers in [0,1] such that none of them are in the same equivalence class. How many members of that set are there? Well, it's not a countable number. This set is not in B1.

Contexts: math; measure theory; real analysis

balance of payments: A country's balance of payments is the quantity of its own currency flowing out of of the country (for purchases, for example, but also for gifts and intrafirm transfers) minus the amount flowing in.

[Ed: this next part is partly speculation; feel free to correct it.] For some purposes this term refers to a stock value and for others a flow value. It is well defined over a period in the sense that it has changed from time A to time B.

Source:
A macro model exhibits balanced growth if consumption, investment, and capital grow at at a constant rate while hours of work per time period stays constant.

Source: Cooley, 1995, p 16
Contexts: macro; modelling

Banach space:
Any complete normed vector space is a Banach space.

Contexts: real analysis

bandwidth:
In kernel estimation, a scalar argument to the kernel function that determines what range of the nearby data points will be heavily weighted in making an estimate. The choice of bandwidth represents a tradeoff between bias (which is intrinsic to a kernel estimator, and which increases with bandwidth), and variance of the estimates from the data (which decreases with bandwidth).
Cross-validation is one way to choose the bandwidth as a function of the data.
Has a variety of similar definitions in spectral analysis. Generally, a bandwidth is some way of defining the range of frequencies that will be included by the estimation process. In some estimations it is an argument to the estimation process.

Source: Hardle, 1990, especially p 148
Contexts: econometrics; statistics

bank note: In periods of free banking, such as most states in the U.S. from 1839-1863, banks could issue their own money, called bank notes. A bank note was a risky, perpetual debt claim on a bank which paid no interest, and could be redeemed on demand at the original bank, usually in gold. There was a risk that the bank would not be able or willing to redeem it.

Contexts: money; history

barter economy: An economy that does not have a medium of exchange, or money, and where trade occurs instead by exchanging useful goods for useful goods.

Source: McCallum, 1983
Contexts: money; models

base point pricing: The practice of firms setting prices as if their transportation costs to all locations were the same, even if all the vendors are distant from one another and have substantially different costs of transportation to each location. One might interpret this as a form of monitored collusion between the vendor firms.

Contexts: IO

basin of attraction:
the region of states, in a dynamical system, around a particular stable steady state, that lead to trajectories going to the stable steady state. (E.g. the region inside the event horizon around a black hole.)

Source: James Montgomery, social networks paper
Contexts: macro; models

basis point:
One-hundredth of a percentage point. Used in the context of interest rates.

Contexts: finance; business

basket:
A known set of fixed quantites of known goods, needed for defining a price index.

Contexts: macro; price indexes

Bayesian analysis: "In Bayesian analysis all quantities, including the parameters, are random variables. Thus, a model is said to be identified in probability if the posterior distribution for [the parameter to be estimated] is proper."

Source: Hsiao, The New Palgrave: Econometrics, p 98
Contexts: econometrics; statistics

Bellman equation:
Any value or flow value equation. For a discrete problem it can generally be of the form:
v(k) = max over k' of { u(k,k') + b*v(k') }
where:
u() is the one-period return function (e.g., a utility function) and
v() is the value function and
k is the current state and
k' is the state to be chosen and
b is a scalar real parameter, the discount rate, generally slightly less than one.


Contexts: dynamic optimization; macro; models

Bertrand competition:
A bidding war in which the bidders end up at a zero-profit price. See Bertrand game.

Contexts: game theory; IO

Bertrand duopoly: The two firms producing in a market modeled as a Bertrand game.

Contexts: IO

Bertrand game: Model of a bidding war between firms each of which can offer to sell a certain good (say, widgets), but no other firms can. Each firm may choose a price to sell widgets at, and must then supply as many as are demanded. Consumers are assumed to buy the cheaper one, or to purchase half from each if the prices are the same. Best for the firms (both collectively and individually) is to cooperate, charge monopoly price, and split the profits. Each firm could seize the whole market by lowering price slightly, however, and the noncooperative Nash equilibrium outcome of a Bertrand game is that both charge a zero-profit price.

Contexts: game theory; IO

Beveridge curve: The graph of the inverse relation of unemployment to job vacancies.

Contexts: labor; macro

BHHH:
A numerical optimization method from Berndt, Hall, Hall, and Hausman (1974). Used in Gauss, for example. The following discussion of BHHH was posted to the newsgroup sci.econ.research by Paul L. Schumann, Ph.D., Professor of Management at Minnesota State University, Mankato (formerly Mankato State University). It is included here without any explicit permission whatsoever.
BHHH usually refers to the procedure explained in Berndt, E., Hall, B.,
Hall, R., & Hausman, J. (1974), "Estimation and Inference in Nonlinear
Structural Models," Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, 3/4: 653-665.

BHHH provides a method of estimating the asymptotic covariance matrix of a
Maximum Likelihood Estimator. In particular, the covariance matrix for a MLE
depends on the second derivatives of the log-likelihood function. However,
the second derivatives tend to be complicated nonlinear functions. BHHH
estimates the asymptotic covariance matrix using first derivatives instead
of analytic second derivatives. Thus, BHHH is usually easier to compute than
other methods.

In addition to the original BHHH article referenced above, BHHH is also
discussed in Greene, W.H., Econometric Analysis, 3rd Edition, Prentice-Hall,
1997. Greene's econometric software program, LIMDEP, uses BHHH for some of
the estimation routines.

Someone (perhaps BHHH themselves?) wrote a Fortran subroutine in the 1970's
to do BHHH. I do not have a copy of this subroutine at the present time. You
may want to check out Green's econometric software, LIMDEP, to see if it
will do what you require, rather than writing your own program to use an
existing BHHH subroutine. The Web address for LIMDEP is:
  http://www.limdep.com/index.htm

Cheers,
Paul.

--
  Paul L. Schumann, Ph.D., Professor of Management
  Minnesota State University, Mankato (formerly Mankato State University)
  Mankato, MN  56002
  mailto:paul.schumann@mankato.msus.edu
  http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~schumann/www/welcome.html


Source: Gauss Applications: Maximum Likelihood; Berndt, Hall, Hall, and Hausman (1974)
With thanks to: Paul L. Schumann, Ph.D., Professor of Management
Minnesota State University, Mankato (formerly Mankato State University)
Mankato, MN 56002
mailto:paul.schumann@mankato.msus.edu
http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~schumann/www/welcome.html

Contexts: numerical methods; estimation

BHPS: British Household Panel Survey. A British government database going back to 1990. Web page: http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps/index.php

Contexts: data; labor

bias: the difference between the parameter and the expected value of the estimator of the parameter.

Contexts: econometrics; estimation

bidding function:
In an auction analysis, a bidding function (often denoted b()) is a function whose value is the bid that a particular player should make. Often it is a function of the player's value, v, of the good being auctioned. Thus the common notation b(v).

Contexts: micro theory; IO

bill of exchange:
From the late Middle Ages. A contract entitling an exporter to receive immediate payment in the local currency for goods that would be shipped elsewhere. Time would elapse between payment in one currency and repayment in another, so the interest rate would also be brought into the transaction.

Source: Glasner, p. 23
Contexts: history; money

billon:
A mixture of silver and copper, from which small coins were made in medieval Europe. Larger coins were made of silver or gold.

Source: Thomas J Sargent and Francois R Velde, 1997, "The Evolution of Small Change", unpublished paper, p. 6

bimetallism:
A commodity money regime in which there is concurrent circulation of coins made from each of two metals and a fixed exchange rate between them. Historically the metals have almost always been gold and silver. Bimetallism was tried many times with varying success but since about 1873 the practice has been generally abandoned.

Source: Velde, Francois R., and Warren E. Weber. 1998. "A Model of Bimetallism." Working paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and University of Minnesota. page 2.
Contexts: money

BJE:
Bell Journal of Economics, the previous name of the RAND Journal of Economics or RJE.

Contexts: journals

Black-Scholes equation: An equation for option securities prices on the basis of an assumed stochastic process for stock prices.

The Black-Scholes algorithm can produce an estimate the value of a call on a stock, using as input:
-- an estimate of the risk-free interest rate now and in the near future
-- current price of the stock
-- exercise price of the option (strike price)
-- expiration date of the option
-- an estimate of the volatility of the stock's price
Click here for a derivation of Black-Scholes equation. From the Black-Scholes equation one can derive the price of an option.

Click here for a simplified derivation which assumes risk-neutrality.

Contexts: finance; business

BLS: Abbrevation for the U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the Labor Department.


Contexts: data

Bonferroni criterion: Suppose a certain treatment of a patient has no effect. If one runs a test of statistical significance on enough randomly selected subsets of the patient base, one would find some subsets in which statistically significant differences were apparently distinguished by the treatment. The Bonferroni criterion is a redefinition of the statistical signficance criterion for the testing of many subgroups: e.g. if there are five subgroups and one of them shows an effect of the treatment at the .01 significance level, the overall finding is significant at the .05 level. This is discussed in more detail (and probably more correctly) in Bland and Altman (1995) in the statistics notes of the British Medical Journal. Either of these links should go there:
Llink 1.
Link 2; search for Bonferroni.


Source: British Medical Journal, statistics notes by Bland and Altman.
Contexts: statistics; epidemiology

bootstrapping: The activity of applying estimators to each of many subsamples of a data sample, in the hope that the distribution of the estimator applied to these subsamples is similar to the distribution of the estimator when applied to the distribution that generated the sample.

It is a method that gives a sense of the sampling variability of an estimator. "After the set of coefficients b0 is computed, M randomly drawn samples of T observations are drawn from the original data set with replacement. T may be less than or equal to n, the sample size. With each such sample the ... estimator is recomputed." -- Greene, p 658-9.
The properties of this distribution of estimates of b0 can then be characterized, e.g. its variance. If the estimates are highly variable, the investigator knows not to think of the estimate of b0 as precise.

Bootstrapping could also be used to estimate by simulation, or empirically, the variance of an estimation procedure for which no algebraic expression for the variance exists.

Source: Greene, 1993, p 658-9
Contexts: econometrics; estimation; statistics

Borel set:
Any element of a Borel sigma-algebra.

Contexts: math; measure theory; real analysis

Borel sigma-algebra: The Borel sigma-algebra of a set S is the smallest sigma-algebra of S that contains all of the open balls in S. Any element of a Borel sigma-algebra is a Borel set.

Example: The set B1 is the Borel sigma-algebra of the real line, and thus contains every open interval.

Example: Consider a filled circle in the unit square. It can be constructed by a countable number of non-overlapping open rectangles (since a series of such rectangles can be defined that would cover every point in the circle but no point outside of it. Therefore it is in the smallest sigma-algebra of open subsets of the unit square.



Contexts: math; measure theory; real analysis

bounded rationality: Models of bounded rationality are defined in a recent book by Ariel Rubinstein as those in which some aspect of the process of choice is explicitly modeled.

Source: Rubinstein, Ariel. 1998. Modeling Bounded Rationality.
Contexts: game theory; micro theory

Box-Cox transformation:
The Box-Cox transformation, below, can be applied to a regressor, a combination of regressors, and/or to the dependent variable in a regression. The objective of doing so is usually to make the residuals of the regression more homoskedastic and closer to a normal distribution:
{
y(l) = ((y^l) - 1) / l for l not equal to zero
y(l)=log(y)l=0
Box and Cox (1964) developed the transformation.

Estimation of any Box-Cox parameters is by maximum likelihood.

Box and Cox (1964) offered an example in which the data had the form of survival times but the underlying biological structure was of hazard rates, and the transformation identified this.

Source: Box and Cox, 1964; Stata 7 manual entry for boxcox; Davidson and Mackinnon, 1993, pp 481-488.
Contexts: econometrics; statistics

Box-Jenkins: A "methodology for identifying, estimating, and forecasting" ARMA models. (Enders, 1996, p 23). The reference in the name is to Box and Jenkins, 1976.

Source: Enders, 1996, p 23
Contexts: time series; econometrics

Box-Pierce statistic: Defined on a time series sample for each natural number k by the sum of the squares of the first k sample autocorrelations. The kth sample autocorrelation is denoted r:
BP(k)=Ss=1k [rs2]
Used to tell if a time series is nonstationary.
Below is Gauss code with a procedure that calculates the Box-Pierce statistic for a set of residuals.
/* A series of residuals eps_hat[] is generated from a regression, e.g.: */

eps_hat = y - X*betaols;

/* Then the Box-Pierce statistic for each k can be calculated this way: */

print "Box-Pierce statistic for k=1 is" BP(eps_hat,1);
print "Box-Pierce statistic for k=2 is" BP(eps_hat,2);
print "Box-Pierce statistic for k=3 is" BP(eps_hat,3);

proc BP(series, k);
  local beep, rho;
  beep = 0;
  do until k < 1;
    rho = autocor(series, k);
    beep = beep + rho * rho;
    k = k - 1;
  endo;
  beep = beep * rows(series);     /* BP = T* (the sum) */
  retp(beep);
endp;

/* This functions calculates autocorrelation estimates for lag k */
proc autocor(series, k);
  local rowz,y,x,rho;
  rowz = rows(series);
  y = series[k+1:rowz];
  x = series[1:rowz-k];
  rho = inv(x'x)*x'y;            /* compute autocorrelation by OLS */
  retp(rho);
endp;


Contexts: finance, time series

BPEA:
An abbreviation for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.


Brent method:
An algorithm for choosing the step lengths when numerically calculating maximum likelihood estimates.

Source: Gauss Applications: Maximum Likelihood
; Brent, 1972
Contexts: numerical methods; estimation

Bretton Woods system:
The international monetary framework of fixed exchange rates after World War II. Drawn up by the U.S. and Britain in 1944. Keynes was one of the architects. The meetings occurred at Bretton Wood, New Hampshire, in the U.S., in July 1944. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, now called the World Bank, was planned at the meetings. So was the International Monetary Fund or IMF.
The system ended on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon ended trading of gold at the fixed price of $35/ounce. At that point for the first time in history, formal links between the major world currencies and real commodities were severed.

Source: Glasner, p 157-160;
The International Forum on Globalization. Alternatives to Economic Globalization. 2002. p.18
Contexts: money; history

Breusch-Pagan statistic: A diagnostic test of a regression. It is a statistic for testing whether dependent variable y is heteroskedastic as a function of regressors X. If it is, that suggests use of GLS or SUR estimation in place of OLS. The test statistic is always nonnegative. Large values of test statistic reject the hypothesis that y is homoskedastic in X. The meaning of 'large' varies with the number of variables in X.

Quoting almost directly from the Stata manual: The Breusch and Pagan (1980) chi-squared statistic -- a Lagrange multiplier statistic -- is given by

l = T * [Sm=1m=M [Sn=1n=m-1 [rmn2 ]]

where rmn2 is the estimated correlation between the residuals of the M equations and T is the number of observations. It has a chi-squared distribution with M(M-1)/2 degrees of freedom.



Source: Breusch, T. and A. Pagan. 1980. "The LM test and its applications to model specification in econometrics." Review of Economic Studies. 47: 239-254.

StataCorp. 1999. Stata statistical software release 6.0 manual, vol 4., page 14.

Contexts: estimation; econometrics

bubble: A substantial movement in market price away from a price determined by fundamental value. In practice, "bubble" always refers to a situation where the market price is higher than the conjectured fundamentally supported price. The idea of a fundamental value requires some model or outside knowledge of what the security (or other good) is worth.

Bubbles are often described as speculative and it is conjectured that bubbles could be risky ventures for speculators who earn a fair rate of return on them. [ed: I believe these are "rational" bubbles.]
There exist statistical models of a bubbles. For example, stochastic collapsing bubbles are cited to Blanchard and Watson (1982) -- in this form, "the bubble continues with a certain conditional probability and collapses otherwise."

Source: Bollerslev and Hodrick (1992), p 15;

For more discussion of the definition and a history of examples, see:
Garber, Peter M. 2000. Famous First Bubbles. MIT Press.
especially its introduction. And academic articles by Garber too.
Contexts: finance

budget:
A budget is a description of a financial plan. It is a list of estimates of revenues to and expenditures by an agent for a stated period of time. Normally a budget describes a period in the future not the past.


budget line:
A consumer's budget line characterizes on a graph the maximum amounts of goods that the consumer can afford. In a two good case, we can think of quantities of good X on the horizontal axis and quantities of good Y on the vertical axis. The term is often used when there are many goods, and without reference to any actual graph.



Contexts: micro theory; phrases

budget set:
The set of bundles of goods an agent can afford. This set is a function of the prices of goods and the agents endownment.

Assuming the agent cannot have a negative quantity of any good, the budget set can be characterized this way. Let e be a vector representing the quantities of the agent's endowment of each possible good, and p be a vector of prices for those goods. Let B(p,e) be the budget set. Let x be an element of R+L; that is, the space of nonnegative reals of dimension L, the number of possible goods. Then:
B(p,e) = {x: px <= pe}

Contexts: general equilibrium; models

bureaucracy:
A form of organization in which officeholders have defined positions and (usually) titles. Formal rules specify the duties of the officeholders. Personalistic distinctions are usually discouraged by the rules.


Burr distribution:
Has density function (pdf):
f(x) = ckxc-1(1+xc)k+1 for constants c>0, k>0, and for x>0.
Has distribution function (cdf): F(x) = 1 - (1+xc)-k.


Source: Maddala, 1983/96, p 10-11; Burr, 1942
Contexts: econometrics

business:
Relevant terms: basis point, Black-Scholes equation, call option, conglomerate, coupon strip, EBITDA, ex dividend date, NASDAQ, NYSE, option, principal strip, pro forma, put option, reinsurance.

Contexts: fields

business cycle frequency:
Three to five years. Called the business cycle frequency by Burns and Mitchell (1946), and this became standard language.

Source: Cooley, 1995, p 28
Contexts: macro

BVAR:
Bayesian VAR (Vector Autoregression)

Contexts: time series; econometrics; estimation

CAGR: Cumulative Average Growth Rate


calculus of voting:
A model of political voting behavior in which a citizen chooses to vote if the costs of doing so are outweighed by the strength of the citizen's preference for one candidate weighted by the anticipated probability that the citizen's vote will be decisive in the election.

Source: Downs, 1957; Riker and Ordeshook, 1968
Contexts: political science

calibration:
NOT SURE WHICH OF THESE (IF EITHER) IS RIGHT:
1. The
estimation of some parameters of a model, under the assumption that the model is correct, as a middle step in the study of other parameters. Use of this word suggests that the investigator wishes to give those other parameters of the model a 'fair chance' to describe the data, not to get stuck in a side discussion about whether the calibrated parameters are ideally modeled or estimated.

2. Taking parameters that have been estimated for a similar model into one's own model, solving one's own model numerically, and simulating. Attributed to Edward Prescott.

Contexts: econometrics; estimation

call option: A call option conveys the right to buy a specified quantity of an underlying security.

Contexts: finance; business

capital:
Something owned which provides ongoing services. In the national accounts, or to firms, capital is made up of durable investment goods, normally summed in units of money. Broadly: land plus physical structures plus equipment. The idea is used in models and in the national accounts.

See also human capital and social capital.

Contexts: macro; IO

capital consumption: In national accounts, this is the amount by which gross investment exceeds net investment. It is the same as replacement investment.
-- Oulton (2002, p. 13)

Source: Oulton, Nicholas. 2002. "Productivity versus welfare: or GDP versus Weitzman's NDP." Bank of England. On the web.
Contexts: macro; measurement; government

capital deepening:
Increase in capital intensity, normally in a macro context where it is measured by something analogous to the capital stock available per labor hour spent. In a micro context, it could mean the amount of capital available for a worker to use, but this use is rare.

Capital deepening is a macroeconomic concept, of a faster-growing magnitude of capital in production than in labor. Industrialization involved capital deepening - that is, more and more expensive equipment with a lesser corresponding rise in wage expenses.

Capital deepening has been measured by a rising ratio of some kind of capital in production, or services provided by capital to production, to total output. Capital may include land, structures, equipment, or the relevant capital may be a more narrowly defined input (e.g. a computer equipment).

Source: Oulton, Nicholas. 2002. "Productivity versus welfare: or GDP versus Weitzman's NDP." Bank of England. page 31. On the Web.

Margo, Atack, and others on US national growth 1850-1880. ~2003 NBER paper.
Contexts: macro

capital intensity: Amount of capital per unit of labor input.


capital ratio: A measure of a bank's capital strength used by U.S. regulatory agencies.

Contexts: money; banking

capital structure:
The capital structure of a firm is broadly made up of its amounts of equity and debt.

Contexts: finance

capital-augmenting: One of the ways in which an effectiveness variable could be included in a production function in a Solow model. If effectiveness A is multiplied by capital K but not by labor L, then we say the effectiveness variable is capital-augmenting.
For example, in the model of output Y where Y=(AK)aL1-a the effectiveness variable A is capital-augmenting but in the model Y=AKaL1-a it is not.
Another example would be a capital utilization variable as measured say by electricity usage. (E.g., as in Eichenbaum). ----------------- An example: in the context of a railroad, automatic railroad signaling, track-switching, and car-coupling devices are capital-augmenting. From Moses Abramovitz and Paul A. David, 1996. "Convergence and Deferred Catch-up: productivity leadership and the waning of American exceptionalism." In Mosaic of Economic Growth, edited by Ralph Landau, Timothy Taylor, and Gavin Wright.

Source: Romer, 1996, p 7
Contexts: macro

capitation: The system of payment for each customer served, rather than by service performed. Both are used in various ways in U.S. medical care.

Source: Weisbrod's class circa 5/21/97
Contexts: public

CAPM:
Capital Asset Pricing Model

Contexts: finance; models

CAR:
stands for Cumulative Average Return.

A portfolio's
abnormal return (AR) at each time is ARt=Sum from i=1 to N of each arit/N. Here arit is the abnormal return at time t of security i.

Over a window from t=1 to T, the CAR is the sum of all the ARs.

Contexts: finance

CARA utility: A class of utility functions. Also called exponential utility. Has the form, for some positive constant a:
u(c)=-(1/a)e-ac
"Under this specification the elasticity of marginal utility is equal to -ac, and the instantaneous elasticity of substitution is equal to 1/ac."
The coefficient of absolute risk aversion is a; thus the abbreviation CARA for Constant Absolute Risk Aversion. "Constant absolute risk aversion is usually thought of as a less plausible description of risk aversion than constant relative risk aversion" (that's the
CRRA, which see), but it can be more analytically convenient.

Source: Blanchard and Fischer, p. 44
Contexts: models

CARs: cumulative average adjusted returns

Contexts: finance

cash-in-advance constraint:
A modeling idea. In a basic Arrow-Debreu general equilibrium there is no need for money because exchanges are automatic, through a Walrasian auctioneer. To study monetary phenomena, a class of models was made in which money was required to make purchases of other goods. In such a model the budget constraint is written so that the agent must have enough cash on hand to make any consumption purchase. Using this mechanism money can have a positive price in equilibrium and monetary effects can be seen in such models. Contrast money-in-the-utility function for an alternative modeling approach.

Source: Ostroy and Starr, 1990, pp 6-7
Contexts: money; models

catch-up: "'Catch-up' refers to the long-run process by which productivity laggards close the proportional gaps that separate them from the productivity leader .... 'Convergence,' in our usage, refers to a reduction of a measure of dispersion in the relative productivity levels of the array of countries under examination." Like Barro and Sala-i-Martin (92)'s "sigma-convergence", a narrowing of the dispersion of country productivity levels over time.

Source: From Moses Abramovitz and Paul A. David, 1996. "Convergence and Deferred Catch-up: productivity leadership and the waning of American exceptionalism." In Mosaic of Economic Growth, edited by Ralph Landau, Timothy Taylor, and Gavin Wright.
Contexts: international; macro

Cauchy distribution:
Has thicker tails than a normal distribution.
density function (pdf): f(x) = 1/[pi*(1+x2)]. distribution function (cdf): F(x) = .5 + (tan-1x)/pi.
 ><br>

<br><br>
Source: Maddala, p. 9<br>
Contexts: econometrics; statistics<br>
<br>

<strong>Cauchy sequence:</strong><a name= A sequence satisfies the Cauchy criterion iff for each positive real epsilon there exists a natural number N such that the distance between any two elements of the sequence past the Nth element is less than epsilon. 'Distance' must be defined in context by the user of the term.

One sometimes hears the construction: 'The sequence is Cauchy' if the sequence satisfies the definition.

Source: Stokey and Lucas, 1989
Contexts: real analysis

CCAPM: Stands for Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model.
A theory of asset prices. Formulated in Lucas, 1978, and Breeden, 1979.

Source: Lucas, 1978; Breeden, 1979
Contexts: finance; macro

CDE:
Stands for Corporate Data Exchange, an organization which has data on the shareholdings of large U.S. companies.

Source: Weisbach, 1988, p 448
Contexts: finance

cdf:
cumulative distribution function. This function describes a statistical distribution. It has the value, at each possible outcome, of the probability of receiving that outcome or a lower one. A cdf is usually denoted in capital letters. Consider for example some F(x), with x a real number is the probability of receiving a draw less than or equal to x. A particular form of F(x) will describe the normal distribution, or any other unidimensional distribution.

Contexts: econometrics; statistics

CDFC:
Stands for Concavity of distribution function condition.

Contexts: micro theory

censored dependent variable: A dependent variable in a model is censored if observations of it cannot be seen when it takes on vales in some range. That is, the independent variables are observed for such observations but the dependent variable is not.

A natural example is that if we have data on consumers and prices paid for cars, if a consumer's willingness-to-pay for a car is negative, we will see observations with consumer information but no car price, no matter how low car prices go in the data. Price observations are then censored at zero.

Contrast
truncated dependent variables.

Contexts: econometrics; estimation

central bank: A government bank; a bank for banks.

Source: Mark Witte, (mwitte@nwu.edu).
Contexts: money; macro

certainty equivalence principle:
Imagine that a stochastic objective function is a function only of output and output-squared. Then the solution to the optimization problem of choosing output will have the special characteristic that only the conditional means of the future forcing variables appear in the first order conditions. (By conditional means is meant the set of means for each state of the world.) Then the solution has the "certainty equivalence" property. "That is, the problem can be separated into two stages: first, get minimum mean squared error forecasts of the exogenous [variables], which are the conditional expectations...; second, at time t, solve the nonstochastic optimization problem," using the mean in place of the random variable. "This separation of forecasting from optimization.... is computationally very convenient and explains why quadratic objective functions are assumed in much applied work. For general [functions] the certainty equivalence principle does not hold, so that the forecasting and opt problems do not 'separate.'"

Source: Sargent, 1979, Ch 14, p 396
Contexts: macro; finance; models

certainty equivalent: The amount of payoff (e.g. money or utility) that an agent would have to receive to be indifferent between that payoff and a given gamble is called that gamble's 'certainty equivalent'. For a risk averse agent (as most are assumed to be) the certainty equivalent is less than the expected value of the gamble because the agent prefers to reduce uncertainty.

Contexts: micro theory; finance

CES production function:
CES stands for constant elasticity of substitution. This is a function describing production, usually at a macroeconomic level, with two inputs which are usually capital and labor. As defined by Arrow, Chenery, Minhas, and Solow, 1961 (p. 230), it is written this way:

V = (bK-r + aL-r) -(1/r)

where V = value-added, (though y for output is more common),
K is a measure of
capital input,
L is a measure of labor input,
and the Greek letters are constants. Normally a>0 and b>0 and r>-1. For more details see the source article.

In this function the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is constant for any value of K and L. It is (1+r)-1.

Source: Defined and discussed in Arrow, Chenery, Minhas, and Solow, 1961.
Contexts: macro; models

CES technology: Example, adapted from Caselli and Ventura:
For capital k, labor input n, and constant b<?? (?less that what?)
f(k,n) = (kb + nb)1/b
Here the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is less than one, i.e. 1/(1-b)<1.


Source: "A Representative Consumer Theory of Distribution" by Francesco Caselli and Jaume Ventura, working paper dated April, 1996 presented at Summer Macro Conference at Northwestern University circa July 28, 1996
Contexts: models

CES utility:
Stands for Constant Elasticity of Substitution, a kind of utility function. A synonym for CRRA or isoelastic utility function. Often written this way, presuming a constant g not equal to one:
u(c)=c1-g/(1-g)
This limits to u(c)=ln(c) as g goes to one.
The elasticity of substitution between consumption at any two points in time is constant, equal to 1/g. "The elasticity of marginal utility is equal to" -g. g can also be said to be the coefficient of relative risk aversion, defined as -u"(c)c/u'(c), which is why this function is also called the CRRA (constant relative risk aversion) utility function.

Source: Blanchard and Fischer, p. 44
Contexts: macro; finance; models

ceteris paribus:
means "assuming all else is held constant". The author is attempting to distinguish an effect of one kind of change from any others.

Contexts: phrases

CEX:
Abbreviation for the U.S. government's Consumer Expenditure Survey

Contexts: data

CFTC: The U.S. government's Commodities and Futures Trading Commission.


CGE:
An occasional abbreviation for "computable general equilibrium" models.

Contexts: models

chained:
Describes an index number that is frequently reweighted. An example is an inflation index made up of prices weighted by frequency with which they are paid, and frequent recomputation of weights makes it a chained inded.

Source: Hulten, 2000
Contexts: index numbers

chaotic: A description of a dynamic system that is very sensitive to initial conditions and may evolve in wildly different ways from slightly different initial conditions.

Source: Devaney, 1992, p 1-2
Contexts: mathematics; dynamic optimization

characteristic equation:
polynomial whose roots are eigenvalues

Contexts: linear algebra

characteristic function: Denoted here PSI(t) or PSIX(t). Is defined for any random variable X with a pdf f(x). PSI(t) is defined to be E[eitX], which is the integral from minus infinity to infinity of eitXf(x). This is also the cgf, or cumulant generating function. "Every distribution has a unique characteristic function; and to each characteristic function there corresponds a unique distribution of probability." -- Hogg and Craig, p 64

Source: Hogg and Craig, 1995, p 64
Contexts: econometrics; statistics

characteristic root:
Synonym for eigenvalue.

Contexts: linear algebra

chartalism: or "state theory of money" -- 19th century monetary theory, based more on the idea that legal restrictions or customs can or should maintain the value of money, not intrinsic content of valuable metal.

Source: Thomas J Sargent and Francois R Velde, 1997, "The Evolution of Small Change", unpublished paper, p. 27

chi-square distribution:
A continuous distribution, with natural number parameter r. Is the distribution of sums of squares of r standard normal variables. Mean is r, variance is 2r, pdf and cdf is difficult to express in html, and moment-generating function (mgf) is (1-2t)-r/2.

From older definition in this same database: If n random values z1, z2, ..., zn are drawn from a standard normal distribution, squared, and summed, the resulting statistic is said to have a chi-squared distribution with n degrees of freedom: z12 + z22 + ... + zn2) ~ X2(n) This is a one-parameter family of distributions, and the parameter, n, is conventionally labeled the degrees of freedom of the distribution. -- quoted and paraphrased from Johnston See also noncentral chi-squared distribution

Source: Hogg and Craig; Johnston (p. 530 in older edition?)
Contexts: statistics

Chicago School: Refers to an perspective on economics of the University of Chicago circa 1970. Variously interpreted to imply:
1) A preference for models in which information is perfect, and an associated search for empirical evidence that choices, not institutional limitations, are what result in outcomes for people. (E.g., that committing crime is a career choice; that smoking represents an informed tradeoff between health risk and immediate gratification.)
2) That antitrust law is rarely necessary, because potential competition will limit monopolist abuses.


Contexts: phrases

choke price:
The lowest price at which the quantity demanded is zero.


Cholesky decomposition:
Given a symmetric positive definite square matrix X, the Cholesky decomposition of X is the factorization X=U'U, where U is the square root matrix of X, and satisfies:
(1) U'U = X
(2) U is upper triangular (that is, it has all zeros below the diagonal) Once U has been computed, one can calculate the inverse of X more easily, because X-1 = U-1(U')-1, and the inverses of U and U' are easier to compute.

Source: Greene, 1993, p 36; Gauss help system, under CHOL(), which finds U given X
Contexts: econometrics; linear algebra

Cholesky factorization:
Same as Cholesky decomposition.

Source: Greene, 1993, p 36
Contexts: econometrics

Chow test: A particular test for structural change; an econometric test to determine whether the coefficients in a regression model are the same in separate subsamples. In reference to a paper of G.C. Chow (1960), "the standard F test for the equality of two sets of coefficients in linear regression models" is called a Chow test. See derivation and explanation in Davidson and MacKinnon, p. 375-376. More info in Greene, 2nd edition, p 211-2.

Homoskedasticity of errors is assumed although this can be dubious since we are open to the possibility that the parameter vector (b) has changed.
RSSR = the sum of squared residuals from a linear regression in which b1 and b2 are assumed to be the same
SSR1 = the sum of squared residuals from a linear regression of sample 1
SSR2 = the sum of squared residuals from a linear regression of sample 2
b has dimension k, and there are n observations in total
Then the F statistic is:
((RSSR-SSR1-SSR2)/k ) / ((SSR1+SSR2)/(n-2k).
That test statistic is the Chow test.

Source: Davidson and MacKinnon, 1993, p 375
Contexts: econometrics; estimation

circulating capital:
flows of value within a production organization. Includes stocks of raw material, work in process, finished goods inventories, and cash on hand needed to pay workers and suppliers before products are sold.

Source: unpublished dissertation, Thomas Geraghty, at Northwestern Univ, 1998
With thanks to: Thomas M. Geraghty, (t-geraghty@nwu.edu)
Contexts: IO

CJE:
An abbreviation for the Canadian Journal of Economics.


CLAD:
Stands for the "Censored Least Absolute Deviations" estimator. If errors are symmetric (with median of zero), this estimator is unbiased and consistent though not efficient. The errors need not be homoskedastic or normally distributed to have those attributes.

CLAD may have been defined for the first time in Powell, 1984.

Source: statalist [email discussion list for Stata] and other unpublished sources
Contexts: econometrics

classical:
According to Lucas (1998), a classical theory would have no explicit reference to preferences. Contrast neoclassical.

Source: Lucas (1998)
Contexts: phrases; macro theory

Clayton Act: A 1914 U.S. law on the subject of antitrust and price discrimination.
Section two prohibits price discrimination.
Section three prohibits sales based on an
exclusive dealing contract requirement that may have the effect of lessening competition.
Section seven prohibits mergers where "the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or tend to create a monopoly" in any line of commerce.

Source: lectures and handouts of Michael Whinston at Northwestern U in Economics D50, Winter 1998
Contexts: IO; antitrust; regulation

clears: A verb. A market clears if the vector of prices for goods is such that the excess demand at those prices is zero. That is, the quantity demanded of every good at those prices is met.

Contexts: general equilibrium; modelling

climacteric:
Critical stage, period, or turning point, usually away from an upward, expansive, or optimistic path into a downward or quiescent direction. Has been used in the context of declining British economic success after 1890.

Source: dictionary
Contexts: economic history; phrases

cliometrics:
the study of economic history; the 'metrics' at the end was put to emphasize (possibly humorously) the frequent use of regression estimation.

"The cliometric contribution was the application of a systematic body of theory -- neoclassical theory -- to history and the application of sophisticated, quantitative techniques to the specification and testing of historical models." -- North (1990/1993) p 131.

Source: North, 1990
Contexts: history; fields

clustered data:
Data whose observations are not iid but rather come in clusters that are correlated together -- e.g. a data set of individuals some of whom are siblings of others, and are therefore similar demographically.

Contexts: data

Coase theorem: Informally: that in presence of complete competitive markets and the absence of transactions costs, an efficient set of inputs to production and outputs from production will be chosen by agents regardless of how property rights over the inputs were assigned to the agents. A detailed discussion is in the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, online.

Contexts: public economics

Cobb-Douglas production function: A standard production function which is applied to describe much output two inputs into a production process make. It is used commonly in both macro and micro examples.

For capital K, labor input L, and constants a, b, and c, the Cobb-Douglas production function is
f(k,n) = bkanc

If a+c=1 this production function has constant returns to scale. (Equivalently, in mathematical language, it would then be linearly homogenous.) This is a standard case and one often writes (1-a) in place of c.

Log-linearization simplifies the function, meaning just that taking logs of both sides of a Cobb-Douglass function gives one better separation of the components.

In the Cobb-Douglass function the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is 1 for all values of capital and labor.

With thanks to: Nelson Noya
Contexts: models

cobweb model: A theoretical model of an adjustment process that on a price/quantity or supply/demand graph spirals toward equilibrium.

Example, from Ehrenberg and Smith: Suppose the equilibrium labor market wage for engineers is stable over a ten-year period, but at the beginning of that period the wage is above equilibrium for some reason. Operating on the assumption, let's say, that engineering wages will remain that high, too many students then go into engineering. The wage falls suddenly from oversupply when that population graduates. Too few students then choose engineering. Then there is a shortage following their graduation. Adjustment to equilibrium could be slow.

"Critical to cobweb models is the assumption that workers form myopic expectations about the future behavior of wages." "Also critical to cobweb models is that the demand curve be flatter than the supply curve; if it is not, the cobweb 'explodes' when demand shifts and an equilibrium wage is never reached."

Source: Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994, p 292-3
Contexts: labor; models

Cochrane-Orcutt estimation:
An algorithm for estimating a time series linear regression in the presence of autocorrelated errors. The implicit citation is to Cochrane-Orcutt (1949).

The procedure is nicely explained in the
SHAZAM manual section online at the SHAZAM web site. Their procedure includes an improvement to include the first observation attributed to the Prais-Winsten transformation. A summary of their excellent description is below. This version of the algorithm can handle only first-order autocorrelation but the Cochrane-Orcutt method could handle more.

Suppose we wish to regress y[t] on X[t] in the presence of autocorrelated errors. Run an OLS regression of y on X and construct a series of residuals e[t]. Regress e[t] on e[t-1] to estimate the autocorrelation coefficient, denoted p here. Then construct series y* and X* by: y*1 = sqrt(1-p2)y1,
X*1 = sqrt(1-p2)X1,

and
y*t = yt - pyt-1,
X*t = Xt - pXt-1

One estimates b in y=bX+u by applying this procedure iteratively -- renaming y* to y and X* to X at each step, until estimates of p have converged satisfactorily.

Using the final estimate of p, one can construct an estimate of the covariance matrix of the errors, and apply GLS to get an efficient estimate of b.

Transformed residuals, the covariance matrix of the estimate of b, R2, and so forth can be calculated; see source.

Source: SHAZAM manual
Contexts: estimation; time series; econometrics

coefficient of absolute risk aversion: This is a measure of the responsiveness to risk implied by a utility function of consumption, for each consumption level. Thus it is an attribute of a model, not an empirical measure usually.

It is defined by RA(c) = -u''(c) / u'(c).

If RA(c) is constant for all c, and there are only two possible investments, a risky one and a risk-free one, the amount of investment in the one risky asset is constant for all c.

See also
coefficient of relative risk aversion, which is cRA(c).

Source: Huang and Litzenberger, p. 20
Contexts: finance; models; utility

coefficient of determination: Same as R-squared.

Source: Greene, 1993, p 72
Contexts: econometrics

coefficient of relative risk aversion: This is a measure of the responsiveness to risk implied by a utility function of consumption, for each consumption level. Thus it is an attribute of a model, not an empirical measure usually.

It is defined by RA(c) = -cu''(c) / u'(c).

If RR(c) is constant for all c, and there are only two possible investments, a risky one and a risk-free one, the proportion of investment in the one risky asset is constant for all c.

See also
coefficient of absolute risk aversion, which is RR(c)/c.

Source: Huang and Litzenberger, p. 20
Contexts: finance; models; utility

coefficient of variation: An attribute of a distribution: its standard deviation divided by its mean.

Example: In a series of wage distributions over time, the standard deviation may rise over time with inflation, but the coefficient of variation may not, and thus the fundamental inequality may not.

Source: Atkinson, 1970, p 252
Contexts: statistics

cohort:
A sub-population going through some specified stage in a process. The term is often applied to describe a population of persons going through some life stage, like a first year in a new school.

Contexts: data; labor

cointegration:
"An (n x 1) vector time series yt is said to be cointegrated if each of the series taken individually is ... nonstationary with a unit root, while some linear combination of the series a'y is stationary ... for some nonzero (n x 1) vector a."
Hamilton uses the phrasing that yt is cointegrated with a', and offers a couple of examples. One was that although consumption and income time series have unit roots, consumption tends to be a roughly constant proportion of income over the long term, so (ln income) minus (ln consumption) looks stationary.

Source: Hamilton, p. 571
Contexts: econometrics; time series; data

commercial paper: commoditized short-term corporate debt.

Contexts: finance

common pool resource:
A common pool resource is one which can be used by many users at once, and use by each one reduces the benefits available to the others. Examples are the radio spectrum, ocean fisheries, public roads and parks.

Common pool resources are different from
public goods such as information, for which use by one user does not reduce its availability to others. (Kruse, 2002, p. 664.)

Source: Kruse, Elizabeth F. "From free privilege to regulation: Wireless firms and the competition for spectrum rights before World War I" Business History Review, Winter 2002, 76:4.
Contexts: public economics

compact: A set is compact if it is closed and bounded.

The concept comes up most often in economics in the context of a theory in which a function must be maximized. Continuous functions that are well defined on a compact domain have a maximum and minimum; this is the
Weierstrauss Theorem. Noncontinuous functions, or functions on a noncompact domain, may not.

Contexts: real analysis; micro theory

comparative advantage: To illustrate the concept of comparative advantage requires at least two goods and at least two places where each good could be produced with scarce resources in each place. The example drawn here is from Ehrenberg and Smith (1997), page 136. Suppose the two goods are food and clothing, and that "the price of food within the United States is 0.50 units of clothing and the price of clothing is 2 units of food. [Suppose also that] the price of food in China is 1.67 units of clothing and the price of clothing is 0.60 units of food." Then we can say that "the United States has a comparative advantage in producing food and China has a comparative advantage in producing clothing. It follows that in a trading relationship the U.S. should allocate at least some of its scarce resources to producing food and China should allocate at least some of its scarce resources to producing clothing, because this is the most efficient allocation of the scarce resources and allows the price of food and clothing to be as low as possible.

Famous economist David Ricardo illustrated this in the 1800s using wool in Britain and wine from Portugal as examples. The comparative advantage concept seems to be one of the really challenging, novel, and useful abstractions in economics.

Source: Ehrenberg and Smith, Modern Labor Economics, sixth edition
Contexts: trade

compensating variation:
The price a consumer would need to be paid, or the price the consumer would need to pay, to be just as well off after (a) a change in prices of products the consumer might buy, and (b) time to adapt to that change. It is assumed the consumer does not benefit or lose from producing the product.

Source: Hicks, John R. 1942. "Consumers' Surplus and Index Numbers." Review of Economic Studies 9(2). pp 126-137. as cited in: Brynjolfsson, Erik, Michael D. Smith, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu. "Consumer Surplus in the Digital Economy: Estimating the Value of Increased Product Variety." p.6. On the net as of Jan 7, 2003.
Contexts: IO

competency trap:
The position of an organization which uses a suboptimal procedure because it is good enough in the short run and so does not switch to a better one. Becker (2004, p. 653) quotes Levitt and March (1988, p. 322) thus: "favorable performance with an inferior procedure leads an organization to accumulate more experience with it, thus keeping experience with a superior procedure inadequate to make it rewarding to use".

Source: Becker, Markus C. "Organizational routines: a review of the literature." Industrial and Corporate Change. Vol 13, no. 4 (August 2004), pp. 643-677.

Levitt, B., and J. March. 1988. "Organizational learning," Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 14, pp. 319-340.
Contexts: management; sociology; organizations

complete:
(economics theory definition) A model's markets are complete if agents can buy insurance contracts to protect them against any future time and state of the world.

(statistics definition) In a context where a distribution is known except for a parameter q, a minimal sufficient statistic is complete if there is only one unbiased estimator of q using that statistic.

Contexts: modelling; statistics

complete market:
One in which the complete set of possible gambles on future states-of-the-world can be constructed with existing assets.
This is a theoretical ideal against which reality can be found more or less wanting. It is a common assumption in finance or macro models, where the set of states-of-the-world is formally defined.

Another phrasing: "a complete set of state contingent claim markets." (HL, p. 124).

Source: Huang and Litzenberger, 1988, p. 124
Contexts: finance; models

Compustat:
a data set used in finance

Contexts: finance; data

concavity of distribution function condition:
A property of a distribution function-utility function pair. (At least, it MAY require specification of the utility function; this editor can't tell well.) It is assumed to hold in some principal-agent models so as to make certain conclusions possible.

Contexts: micro theory

concentration ratio: A way of measuring the concentration of market share held by particular suppliers in a market. "It is the percentage of total market sales accounted for by a given number of leading firms." Thus a four-firm concentration ratio is the total market share of the four firms with the largest market shares. (Sometimes this particular statistic is called the CR4.)

Source: Greer, 1992, p. 176
Contexts: IO

condition number:
A measure of how close a matrix is to being singular. Relevant in estimation if the matrix of regressors is nearly singular the data are nearly collinear and (a) it will be hard to make an accurate or precise inverse, (b) a linear regression will have large standard errors.

The condition number is computed from the
characteristic roots or eigenvalues of the matrix. If the largest characteristic root is denoted L and the smallest characteristic root is S (both being presumed to be positive here, that is, the matrix being diagnosed is presumed to be positive definite), then the condition number is:

g = (L/S).5

Values larger than 20, according to Greene (93), are observed if and only if the matrix is 'nearly singular'. Greene cites Belsley et al (1980) for this term and the number 20.

Source: Greene, 1993, p 33; cites Belsley et al 1980.
Contexts: estimation; econometrics

conditional: has a special use in finance when used without other modifiers; often means 'conditional on time and previous asset returns'. In that context, one might read 'returns are conditionally normally distributed.'

Contexts: finance

conditional factor demands:
a collection of functions that give the optimal demands for each of several inputs as a function of the output expected, and the prices of inputs. Often the prices are taken as given, and incorporated into the functions, and so they are only functions of the output.

Usual forms:

x1(w1, w2, y) is a conditional factor demand for input 1, given input prices w1 and w2, and output quantity y

Source: Varian, 1992
Contexts: models; micro

conditional variance:
Shorthand often used in finance to mean, roughly, "variance at time t given that many events up through time t-1 are known."

For example, it has been useful in studying aggregate stock prices, which go through periods of high volatility and periods of low volatility, to model them econometrically as having the variance at time t as coming from an
AR process. This is the ARCH idea. In such a statistical model, the conditional variance is generally different from the unconditional variance. That is, the unconditional variance is the variance of the whole process, whereas the 'conditional variance' can be better estimated since in this phrasing it is assumed that we can estimate the immediately previous values of variance.

Contexts: finance

conformable: A matrix may not have the right dimension or shape to fit into some particular operaton with another matrix. Take matrix addition -- the matrices are supposed to have the same dimensions to be summed. If they don't, we can say that they are not conformable for addition. The most common application of the term comes in the context of multiplication. Multiplying an M x N matrix A by an R x S matrix B directly can only be done if N=R. Otherwise the matrices are not conformable for this purpose. If instead M=R, then the intended operation may be to take the transpose of A and multiply it by B. This operation would properly be denoted A'B, where the prime denotes the transpose of A.

Contexts: econometrics; linear algebra

conglomerate:
A firm operating in several industries.

Contexts: business; finance

consistent:
An estimator for a parameter is consistent iff the estimator converges in probability to the true value of the parameter; that is, the plim of the estimator, as the sample size goes to infinity, is the parameter itself. Another phrasing: an estimator is consistent if it has asymptotic power of one.

"Consistency", without a modifier, is synonymous with weak consistency.

From Davidson and Mackinnon, p. 79: If for any possible value of the parameter q in a region of a parameter space the power of a test goes to one as sample size n goes to infinity, that test is said to be consistent against alternatives in that region of the parameter space. That is, if as the sample size increases we can in the limit reject every false hypothesis about the parameter, the test is consistent.

How does one prove that an estimator is consistent? Here are two ways.
(1) Prove directly that if the model is correct, the estimator has power one in the limit to reject any alternative but the true parameter.
(2) Sufficient conditions for proving that an estimator is consistent are (i) that the estimator is asymptotically unbiased and (ii) that its variance collapses to zero as the sample size goes to infinity. This method of proof is usually easier than (1) and is commonly used.

The existence of a consistent estimator for a parameter is proof that the parameter is identified. But a parameter could be identified without there being a consistent estimator. For more on this see comment on consistency and identification.

Contexts: econometrics; statistics; estimation

constant returns to scale: An attribute of a production function. A production function exhibits constant returns to scale if changing all inputs by a positive proportional factor has the effect of increasing outputs by that factor. This may be true only over some range, in which case one might say that the production function has constant returns over that range.

Contexts: models

Consumer Expenditure Survey:
Conducted by the U.S. government. See its Web site.

Contexts: data

consumption beta: "A security's consumption beta is the slope in the regression of its return on per capita consumption."

Source: Fama 1991 p 1596
Contexts: finance

consumption set:
The set of affordable consumption bundles. One way to define a consumption set is by a set of prices, one for each possible good, and a budget. Or a consumption set could be defined in a model by some other set of restrictions on the set of possible consumption bundles.
E.g. if consumer i can consume nonnegative quantities of all goods, it is standard to define xi as i's consumption set, a member of R+L where L is the number of goods. Normally if the agent is endowed with a set of goods, the endowment is in the consumption set.

Contexts: general equilibrium; models

contingent valuation:
The use of questionnaires about valuation to estimate the willingness of respondents to pay for public projects or programs.

Often the question is framed, "Would you accept a tax of x to pay for the program?" Any such survey must be carefully done, and even so there is dispute about the value of the basic method, as is discussed in the issue of the
JEP with the Portney (1994) article.

Source: Portney, 1994
Contexts: public finance

contract curve: Same as Pareto set, with the implication that it is drawn in an Edgeworth box.

Source: Varian, 1992, p 324
Contexts: micro theory; general equilibrium; models

contraction mapping: Given a metric space S with distance measure d(), and T:S->S mapping S into itself, T is a contraction mapping if for some b ('b') in the range (0,1), d(Tx,Ty) is less than or equal to b*d(x,y) for all x and y in S.

One often abbreviates the phrase 'contraction mapping' by saying simply that T is a contraction.

The function resulting from the applications of a contraction could slope the opposite way of the original function as long as it is less steeply sloped.

A standard way to prove that an operator T is a contraction is to prove that it satisfies Blackwell's conditions.

Source: Stokey and Lucas, 1989
Contexts: macro; models

contractionary fiscal policy: A government policy of reducing spending and raising taxes.
In the language of some first courses in macroneconomics, it shifts the IS curve (investment/saving curve) to the left.

Contexts: macro

contractionary monetary policy:
A government policy of raising interest rates charged by the central bank.
In the language of some first courses in macroeconomics, it shifts the LM curve (liquidity/money curve) to the left.

Contexts: macro

control for: As used in the following way: "The effect of X on Y disappears when we control for Z", the phrase means to regress Y on both X and Z, together, and to interpret the direct effect of X as the only effect. Here the effect of Z on X has been "controlled for". It is implied that X is not causing changes in Z.

Contexts: phrases; econometrics

control variable:
A variable in a model controlled by an agent in order to optimize something.

Contexts: models

convergence:
Multiple meanings: (1) a mathematical property of a sequence or series that approaches a value;
In macro: "'Catch-up' refers to the long-run process by which productivity laggards close the proportional gaps that separate them from the productivity leader .... 'Convergence,' in our usage, refers to a reduction of a measure of dispersion in the relative productivity levels of the array of countries under examination." Like Barro and Sala-i-Martin (92)'s "sigma-convergence", a narrowing of the dispersion of country productivity levels over time.

Source: From Moses Abramovitz and Paul A. David, 1996. "Convergence and Deferred Catch-up: productivity leadership and the waning of American exceptionalism." In Mosaic of Economic Growth, edited by Ralph Landau, Timothy Taylor, and Gavin Wright.

convergence in quadratic mean:
A kind of convergence of random variables. If xt converges in quadratic mean it converges in probability but it does not necessarily converge almost surely.

The following is a best guess, not known to be correct.
Let et be a stochastic process and Ft be an information set at time t uncorrelated with et:

E[et|Ft-m] converges in quadratic mean to zero as m goes to infinity IFF:
E[E[et|Ft-m]2] converges to zero as m goes to infinity.

Contexts: probability; econometrics

convolution: The convolution of two functions U(x) and V(x) is the function:
U*V(x) = (integral from 0 to x of) U(t)V(x-t) dt


Source: Derrick, 1984
Contexts: calculus; complex analysis; real analysis; time series

Cook's distance:
A metric for deciding whether a particular point alone affects regression estimates much. After a regression is run one can consider for each data point how far it is from the means of the independent variables and the dependent variable. If it is far from the means of the independent variables it may be very influential and one can consider whether the regression results are similar without it.

[Need to add the equation defining the Cook's d here.]

Source: Stephen Brown (stephenb@nwu.edu as of Aug 25, 1999)
With thanks to: Stephen Brown (stephenb@nwu.edu as of Aug 25, 1999)
Contexts: estimation

cooperative game:
A game structure in which the players have the option of planning as a group in advance of choosing their actions. Contrast noncooperative game.



Contexts: game theory

core: Defined in terms of an original allocations of goods among agents with specified utility functions. The core is the set of possible reallocations such that no subset of agents could break off from the others and all do better just by trading among themselves.
Equivalently: The intersection of individually rational allocations with the
Pareto efficient allocations. Individually rational, here, means the allocations such that no agent is worse off than with his endowment in the original allocation.

Contexts: general equilibrium; models

corner solution: A choice made by an agent that is at a constraint, and not at the tangency of two classical curves on a graph, one characterizing what the agent could obtain and the other characterizing the imaginable choices that would attain the highest reachable value of the agents' objective.

A classic example is the intersection between a consumer's budget line (characterizing the maximum amounts of good X and good Y that the consumer can afford) and the highest feasible indifference curve. If the agent's best available choice is at a constraint -- e.g. among affordable bundles of good X and good Y the agent prefers quantity zero of good X -- that choice is often not at a tangency of the indifference curve and the budget line, but at a "corner"

Contrast
interior solution.

Contexts: micro theory; phrases

correlation: Two random variables are positively correlated if high values of one are likely to be associated with high values of the other. They are negatively correlated if high values of one are likely to be associated with low values of the other.

Formally, a correlation coefficient is defined between the two random variables (x and y, here). Let sx and xy denote the
standard devations of x and y. Let sxy denote the covariance of x and y. The correlation coefficent between x and y, denoted sometimes rxy, is defined by:

rxy = sxy / sxsy

Correlation coefficients are between -1 and 1, inclusive, by definition. They are greater than zero for positive correlation and less than zero for negative correlations.

Source: Greene, 1997, page 102-3
Contexts: statistics; econometrics

cost curve: A graph of total costs of production as a function of total quantity produced.

Contexts: IO; micro

cost function:
is a function of input prices and output quantity. Its value is the cost of making that output given those input prices. A common form: c(w1, w2, y) is the cost of making output quantity y using inputs that cost w1 and w2 per unit.

Source: Varian, 1992
Contexts: models

cost-benefit analysis:
An approach to public decisionmaking. Quotes below from Sugden and Williams, 1978 p. 236, with some reordering: "Cost-benefit analysis is a 'scientific' technique, or a way of organizing thought, which is used to compare alternative social states or courses of action." "Cost-benefit analysis shows how choices should be made so as to pursue some given objective as efficiently as possible." "It has two essential characteristics, consistency and explicitness. Consistency is the principle that decisions between alternatives should be consistent with objectives....Cost-benefit analysis is explicit in that it seeks to show that particular decisions are the logical implications of particular, stated, objectives." "The analyst's skill is his ability to use this technique. He is hired to use this skill on behalf of his client, the decision-maker..... [The analyst] has the right to refuse offers of employment that would require him to use his skills in ways that he believes to be wrong. But to accept the role of analyst is to agree to work with the client's objectives." p. 241: Two functions of cost-benefit analysis: It "assists the decision-maker to pursue objectives that are, by virtue of the community's assent to the decision-making process, social objectives. And by making explicit what these objectives are, it makes the decision-maker more accountable to the community." "This view of cost-benefit analysis, unlike the narrower value-free interpretation of the decision-making approach, provides a justification for cost-benefit analysis that is independent of the preferences of the analyst's immediate client. An important consequence of this is that the role of the analyst is not completely subservient to that of the decision-maker. Because the analyst has some responsibility of principles over and above those held by the decision-maker, he may have to ask questions that the decision-maker would prefer not to answer, and which expose to debate conflicts of judgement and of interest that might otherwise comfortably have been concealed."

Source: Sugden and Williams, 1978
Contexts: public

cost-of-living index:
A cost-of-living price index measures the changing cost of a constant standard of living. The index is a scalar measure for each time period. Usually it is a positive number which rises over time to indicate that there was inflation. Two incomes can be compared across time by seeing whether the incomes changed as much as the index did.

Contexts: macro; prices

costate:
A costate variable is, in practice, a Lagrangian multiplier, or Hamiltonian multiplier.

Contexts: models

countable additivity property: the third of the properties of a measure.

Contexts: math; probability; measure theory

coupon strip: A bond can be resold into two parts that can be thought of as components: (1) a principal component that is the right to receive the principal at the end date, and (2) the right to receive the coupon payments. The components are called strips. The right to receive coupon payments is the coupon strip.

Contexts: finance; business

Cournot duopoly:
A pair of firms who split a market, modeled as in the Cournot game.

Contexts: IO; models

Cournot game: A game between two firms. Both produce a certain good, say, widgets. No other firms do. The price they receive is a decreasing function of the total quantity of widgets that the firms produce. That function is known to both firms. Each chooses a quantity to produce without knowing how much the other will produce.

Contexts: game theory; IO

Cournot model:
A generalization of the Cournot game to describe industry structure. Each of N firms will choose a quantity of output. Price is a commonly-known decreasing functions of total output. All firms know N and take the output of the others as given. Each firm has a cost function ci(qi). Usually the cost functions are treated as common knowledge. Often the cost functions are assumed to be the same for all firms.

The prediction of the model is that the firms will choose Nash equilibrium output levels.

Formally, from notes given by Michael Whinston to the Economics D50-1 class at Northwestern U. on Sept 23, 1997:
Denote xi as a quantity that firm i considers,
X as the total quantity (the sum of the xi's),
xi* and X* as the Nash equilibrium levels of those quantities,
X-i as the total quantity chosen by all firms other than firm i,
and p(X) as the function mapping total quantity to price in the market.

Each firm i solves:
maxxi p(xi+X-i)-ci(xi)

The first order conditions are, for i from 1 to N:

p'(xi*+X-i)+p(X*)-ci'(xi*)=0

Assuming xi* is greater than 0 for all i, then the Nash equilibrium output levels are characterized by the N equations:

p'(X*)xi* + p(X*) = ci'(xi*) for each i.

Source: handout of Michael Whinston, 9/23/97.
Contexts: IO

covariance stationary: A stochastic process is covariance stationary if neither its mean nor its autocovariances depend on the time or spatial index. For an empirical purpose, one might formally make the assumption that a time series was covariance stationary, then use the data to estimate the mean, variance, and autocovariances.

Formally the definition can be written this way. A stochastic process {yt} is covariance stationary if there exists a constant mean m, a constant variance s2, and a series of constant autocovariances gs such that (using E as the mean or expectations operator):

(1) E[yt] = m for all integers t
(2) E[(yt-m)2)] = s2 for all integers t and
(3) E[(yt-m) (yt+j-m)] = E[(ys-m) (ys+j-m)] for all integers s, t, and j.

Contrast strict stationarity which is usually stricter but includes process which do not have finite variances. Covariance stationary means the same as weakly stationary and generally the same as just stationary.

Source: Enders, 1995, p. 69
Contexts: econometrics; time series

covered: Covered employment is that set of U.S. jobs which pay into the state unemployment insurance systems and therefore the holders of the jobs will receive insurance payments if they are laid off.

Contexts: government

Cowles Commission:
A 1950s, probably British, panel on econometrics which focussed attention on the problem of simultaneous equations. In some tellings of the history this had an impact on the field -- other problems such as errors-in-variables (measurement errors in the independent variables), were set aside or given lower priority elsewhere too because of the prestige and influence of the Cowles Commission.

Source: The New Palgrave: Econometrics (e.g. p.82)
Contexts: econometrics

CPI:
The Consumer Price Index, which is a measure of the cost of goods purchased by average U.S. household. It is calculated by the U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.


As a pure measure of inflation, the CPI has some flaws:
1) new product bias (new products are not counted for a while after the appear)
2) discount store bias (consumers who care won't pay full price)
3) substitution bias (variations in price can cause consumers to respond by substituting on the spot, but the basic measure holds their consumption of various goods constant)
4) quality bias (product improvements are under-counted)
5) formula bias (overweighting of sale items in sample rotation)


Source: Message from Louis Crandall of Wrightson Associates on sci.econ.research circa 10/24/96.
Contexts: macro; labor; data

CPI-U: The U.S.'s government's "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.

Contexts: data

CPI-W:
The U.S.'s government's "Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.

Contexts: data

CPS:
The Current Population Survey (of the U.S.) is compiled by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, which is in the Dept of Commerce. The CPS is the source of official government statistics on employment and unemployment in the U.S. Each month 56,500-59,500 households are interviewed about their average weekly earnings and average hours worked. The households are selected by area to represent the states and the nation. "Each household is interviewed once a month for four consecutive months in one year and again for the corresponding time period a year later" to make month-to-month and year-to-year comparisons possible. The March CPS is special. For one thing the respondents are asked about insurance then.

Source: Blanchflower and Oswald, Ch 4, p. 171; Freeman, 1991
Contexts: data