Political Geography: Global Focus / Topic: Data

Author:: Charles Lewis Taylor
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:: Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:: For analyzing protest and government change, data need to be both reliably measured and valid for the task at hand. Data fundamentalists insist that nothing less than total capture of every event that has taken place is sufficient for analysis. That scenario is, of course, an impossibility. Rather, methods to measure the statistical probability that a sample is appropriate for its targeted universe allow empirical analysis to proceed.
Topic:: Government, Politics, Protests, Data, and Event Indicators
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Philip A. Schrodt and James E. Yonamine
Publication Date:: 07-2013
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace
Institution:: Center for Foreign Policy and Peace Research
Abstract:: The goal of this paper is to provide a general overview of event data and its importance in the study of political conflict. In doing so, we illustrate how the level of methodological sophistication in the data collection, coding, and analyzing process has progressed from the earliest event-data projects in the 1970s to the most current ones today. Additionally, we highlight ongoing debates in the discipline as well as address key challenges that practitioners of event data will have to overcome to generate increasingly accurate and nuanced analyses in the future.
Topic:: International Relations, Forecast, Conflict, Quantitative, and Data
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Antonio Rodríguez Andrés and Simplice A. Asongu
Publication Date:: 03-2013
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:: This paper employs a recent methodological innovation on intellectual property rights (IPRs) harmonization to project global timelines for common policies against business software piracy. The findings on 99 countries are premised on 15 fundamental characteristics of software piracy based on income-levels (high-income, lower-middle-income, uppermiddle-income and low-income), legal-origins (English common-law, French civil-law, German civil-law and, Scandinavian civil-law) and, regional proximity (South Asia, Europe & Central Asia, East Asia & the Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean and, Sub-Saharan Africa). The results broadly show that a feasible horizon for the harmonization of blanket policies ranges from 4 to 10 years
Topic:: Intellectual Property/Copyright, Piracy, Data, Convergence, and Software
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Leonid Kogan and Mary Tian
Publication Date:: 12-2012
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:: "A three-factor model using the standardized-unexpected-earnings and cashflow-to-price factors explains 15 well-known asset pricing anomalies." Our data-mining experiment provides a backdrop against which such claims can be evaluated. We construct three-factor linear pricing models that match return spreads associated with as many as 15 out of 27 commonly used firm characteristics over the 1971-2011 sample. We form target assets by sorting firms into ten portfolios on each of the chosen characteristics and form candidate pricing factors as long-short positions in the extreme decile portfolios. Our analysis exhausts all possible 351 three-factor models, consisting of two characteristic-based factors in addition to the market portfolio. 65% of the examined factor models match a larger fraction of the target return cross-sections than the CAPM or the Fama-French three-factor model. We find that the relative performance of the complete set of three-factor models is highly sensitive to the sample choice and the factor construction methodology. Our results highlight the challenges of evaluating empirical factor models.
Topic:: Economics, Markets, Economic Theory, Data, and Models
Political Geography:: Global Focus

Author:: Antonio Rodríguez Andrés
Publication Date:: 10-2006
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:: This paper tests whether economic inequality is related to suicide mortality. Using an unbalanced panel of 40 countries for the period 1947-2001 allows us to control for the effect of unobserved factors that may have an impact on suicide rates. Our results indicate that there is a statistically insignificant positive effect of inequality on the incidence of suicide. The latter result seems to be robust to a number of specification issues explored in a sensitivity analysis. Our results also suggest that female labour participation has a significant positive effect on the total (males and female) suicide rates, supporting the sociological argument that the role conflict dominates more than the role expansion. Contrary to the total and male suicide rates findings, the fertility rate matters in explaining female suicide rates. Finally, in contrast to previous studies, suicide rates were not sensitive to income levels, divorce rates and alcohol consumption.
Topic:: Economics, Inequality, Public Health, Data, and Suicide
Political Geography:: Global Focus

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