Journal of Economic Analysis http://anser.press/index.php/JEA <p><strong>Announcement:</strong></p> <p><strong>Dear authors and partners,</strong></p> <p><strong>Please be informed that this system no longer accepts new submissions. To submit to JEA, kindly visit our journal's new website at: <a href="https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea" target="_new">https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea</a>. There, you will experience a more enhanced submission process.</strong></p> <p><strong>Note: Authors who have already submitted can continue to use this system for subsequent processes.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Founded in 2022 by a group of young economic scholars and supported by Anser Press, Journal of Economic Analysis (JEA) aims to encourage research in theoretical and applied economics, especially the analysis of innovation economic theory and hot economic issues. <a href="https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea">[Submit]</a></p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">JEA is committed to continuing to publish strong papers in all areas of economics, include but is not limited to the following categories:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/FinancialAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Financial Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/PopulationResourcesandEnviroment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Population, Resources and Environment Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/BusinessManagementAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Business and Management Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/QuantitativeEconomicAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Quantitative Economic Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/DevelopmentEconomicAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Development Economic Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/InternationalTradeAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">International Trade Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/AgriculturalEconomicAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Agricultural Economic Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/RegionalEconomicAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Regional Economic Analysis</a></li> <li><a href="https://anser.press/index.php/JEA/catalog/category/OtherEconomicAnalysis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Other Economic Analysis</a></li> </ul> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Editors aim to provide an efficient and high-quality review process to authors. Where articles are sent out for full review, authors receive careful reports and feedback. </p> <p>The journal is a Gold Open Access journal, online readers don't have to pay any fee. All Article Processing Charges (APCs) are waived until the end of 2024.</p> <p>Target readership of JEA: researchers and practitioners or anyone interested in economics.</p> en-US jea@anser.press (Journal of Economic Analysis Editorial Office) jea@anser.press (Emilia Garcia) Wed, 13 Sep 2023 17:12:56 +0800 OJS 3.3.0.14 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 Determinants of terrorism in the MENA region: a Bayesian Model Averaging based approach http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/536 <p>In this work we aim to identify potential determinants and seek to predict terrorism attack. Thus, to eliminate uncertainty linked to explanatory variables we used the BMA method. We show that, contrary to expectations terrorism in MENA region is no longer purely of economic origin but mainly due to political problems, education, financial development and countries’ demographic characteristics. Likewise, we find that national, international and global terrorism are not of same origins even they present many common roots. In the end, we show that it is possible to predict majority of attacks based on a small number of indicators measuring political risk, financial development and income inequalities.</p> Zohra Aroussi, Mekki Hamdaoui, Mounir Smida Copyright (c) 2023 Zohra Aroussi, Mekki Hamdaoui, Mounir Smida https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/536 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 A ‘White Lie’ of Business Informality: An Exploration of Non-Registered White-owned Businesses in the United States of America http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/560 <p>Utilizing a 2021 nationally representative sample of 7,504 White-owned employer businesses (WOBs) in the United States of America (USA), the extent, and the determinants of WOB business registration are estimated. Business registration is employed as a proxy for business in/formality. Approximately one-fifth (22.5%) of all employer WOBs are unregistered or informal business concerns hidden from government purview. The primary determinants of employer WOB informality are business size (annual revenues under $500,000 and few paid employees), a business owner with less than a four-year college degree, and an upbringing in a lower- or middle-class environment, among other findings. Notably, this research reveals the white lie of the magnitude of White-owned employer business informality in the USA.</p> Michael J. Pisani Copyright (c) 2023 Michael J. Pisani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/560 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 The business cycle’s influence on share repurchases of the UK http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/601 <p>The UK fully legalised open market share repurchases in 1981, and to our knowledge no study has investigated the business cycle’s influence on repurchase decision-making. We address this aspect and investigate the period 1985-2014. This is relevant as the business cycle factors impact the firm-specific variables such as cash flow, profitability, dividends and capital structure, and these factors traditionally influence repurchase decisions. This forms the paper’s theoretical intuition, and the empirical objectives test the business cycle’s influence on the decision to undertake a repurchase, and also its influence on repurchases values. The results find that the business cycle influences both the decision of undertaking repurchases and repurchases’ values, and this influence has aggregately remained positively associated with economic prosperity. Thus, the frequency of repurchase announcements by British firms is more probable during prosperous economic circumstances. The results also reveal that the repurchase-business cycle relationship witnessed a structural break in 1996:Q2, and the real difference following this break is the increase in the business cycle’s influence on the decision regarding repurchase values. The paper thus contributes to existing literature by directly testing the UK’s repurchase-business cycle relationship, and providing detailed empirical evidences that business cycle conditions strongly impact the repurchase decision-making.</p> Adhiraj Sodhi, Cesario Mateus, Irina Mateus, Aleksandar Stojanovic Copyright (c) 2023 Adhiraj Sodhi, Cesario Mateus, Irina Mateus, Aleksandar Stojanovic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/601 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 The Piped Water and Household Food Consumption: Evidence from Cambodia http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/558 <p>This study analyses the effects of piped water on household food consumption per capita by adopting inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment and endogenous treatment effects approaches with data from the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey carried out in 2013 and 2017. A complementary analysis of the effects on primary household income per working-age member is also conducted to give insights into the potential consequences. The study also conducts a robustness check by estimating the fixed effects of piped water utilising village panel data. The results suggest that households using piped water are likely to enjoy higher food consumption per capita, with a complementary finding demonstrating that the use of piped water is likely to increase household income per working-age member.</p> Kimty Seng Copyright (c) 2023 Kimty Seng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/558 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 Informed Trading of Sell-Side Analysts: Evidence from Class Action Lawsuits http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/609 <p>This paper examines whether sell-side analyst-affiliated investors trade stocks before their analysts release material information. Using class action lawsuits, I explore the pre-lawsuit periods and investigate how potentially informed analysts trade their covered firms. The event study finds that analyst-affiliated investors reduce their stockholdings of firms prior to their own analyst downgrades. The findings are more pronounced among investors employed by investment banks. The post-trading performance of analyst-affiliated investors suggests that they have superior information and front-run to maximize benefits.</p> Hyoseok (David) Hwang Copyright (c) 2023 Hyoseok (David) Hwang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/609 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 A Study of Hierarchical Risk Parity in Portfolio Construction http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/577 <p>The construction and optimization of a portfolio is a complex process that has been a historically active research area in finance. For portfolios with highly correlated assets, the performance of traditional risk-based asset allocations methods such as the mean-variance (MV) model is limited when numerous assets are correlated. A novel clustering-based asset allocation method, called Hierarchical Risk Parity (HRP), provides an opportunity to mitigate these limitations in portfolio construction. HRP utilizes the hierarchical relationships between the covariance of assets in a portfolio to determine weight distributions, eliminating the need for the inversion of the covariance matrix that is required by most traditional risk-based asset allocation methods. This research examines the viability of Hierarchical Risk Parity (HRP) method in portfolio construction of a US equity portfolio and compares the performances of HRP to traditional asset allocation methods exemplified by the mean-variance (MV) method. The results of this research show that the performance of the HRP method is comparable to the performance of the MV method. Given these findings, HRP provides an advantageous approach for portfolio construction in practical scenarios where correlated assets are present in the portfolios.</p> Debjani Palit, Victor R. Prybutok Copyright (c) 2023 Debjani Palit, Victor R. Prybutok https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/577 Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 Inflation’s Reduction of the Real Minimum Wage and Unemployment in the USA: 1987 to 2021 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/579 <p>Hundreds of articles have been written that include empirical estimates of the dis-employment effects of minimum wages; however, many of these articles find statistically insignificant effects, some find significant negative effects, and a few find significant positive effects. Most of these studies use multivariate analyses which can be criticized for omitting key variables. The omitted variables problem ruins all statistics and estimates. This paper uses reiterative truncated projected least squares (RTPLS), a solution to the omitted variables problem, to estimate the percentage increase in unemployment due to a one percent increase in the real minimum wage using monthly data for the 50 states of the USA from 1987 to 2021. RTPLS produces a separate elasticity for every observation where differences in these estimates are due to omitted variables. We argue that RTPLS solves most of the econometric problems that David Neumark identified in his keynote address at a minimum wage conference in Berlin in 2018. We find that the percentage change in the unemployment rate due to a one percent change in the minimum wage ranges between 1.156 and 3.389, that the elasticities for different states tend to move together over time, and that all these elasticities are statistically significant at a 95 percent confidence level.</p> Jonathan E. Leightner, Eric Jenkins Copyright (c) 2023 Jonathan E. Leightner, Eric Jenkins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/579 Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800 Similarities and differences between digitalization indexes http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/539 <p>Digitalization is nowadays one of the fastest developing processes. The adoption of digital technologies can provide innumerous opportunities for the organizations to evolve and gain competitive advantage by leveraging of technologies to respond to dynamic expectations and demands. Information about the country digitalization level is essential to decision makers in both public and private organizations. It can present insights on which areas need the most investment, and furthermore to gain feedback on the outcomes of these investments. For companies, it can create a certain predictability on which products and services will be required the most. To assess the evolution of this process in different countries, various indexes were proposed and employed by different corporations. The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) and ICT Development Index (IDI) are used by public organizations. Digitalization Index (DiGiX) and Cisco Digital Readiness Index (CISCO) are used by private companies. Comparing two sectors highlights the most common factors of digital evaluation. Indexes are analyzed thoroughly by their structure, coverage, weights, methodology and ranking. The result of the practical work is a equivalence table which shows the percentage of their similarity. Additionally, a new digitalization index is proposed, based on the result of the previous comparison, which can be applied to analyze both public and private sector of the country’s digitalization level.</p> Olena korzhyk, Jorge Vareda Gomes, Gonçalo João Copyright (c) 2023 Olena korzhyk, Jorge Vareda Gomes, Gonçalo João https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 http://anser.press/index.php/JEA/article/view/539 Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0800