Jane M Binner

University of Birmingham · Department of Accounting and Finance

We construct a quarterly Divisia measure for households and private non-financial corporations and a corresponding dual user cost measure for the UK. Our construction of both the aggregate and its price dual facilitates an investigation of several structural vector autoregresssion (SVARs) for the UK, of the type of non-recursive identifications exa...

This paper contributes to the literature as the first work of its kind to examine the role and importance of Divisia monetary aggregates and concomitant User Cost Price indices as superior monetary policy forecasting tools in a negative interest rate environment. We compare the performance of Di-visia monetary aggregates with traditional simple-sum...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has initiated several initiatives to better understand its behavior, and some projects are monitoring its evolution across countries, which naturally leads to comparisons made by those using the data. However, most “at a glance” comparisons may be misleading because the curve that should explain the evolution of COV...

Opinion polls play an important role in modern democratic processes: they are known to not only affect the outcomes of elections, but also have a significant influence on government policy after elections. Recent years have seen large discrepancies between polls and outcomes at several major elections and referendums, stemming from decreased partic...

This paper develops a duopolistic discounted marketing model with linear advertising costs and advertised prices for mature markets still in expansion. Generic and predatory advertising effects are combined together in the model. We characterize a class of advertising models with some lowered production costs. For such a class of models, advertisin...

We investigate whether or not monetary aggregates are important in determining output. In addition to the official Simple Sum measure of money, we employ the sophisticated weighted Divisia aggregate. We also investigate whether or not the influence of money on output is time varying using data-driven procedures to identify breaks in the data and co...

This article addresses the problem of detecting crisis‐related messages on social media, in order to improve the situational awareness of emergency services. Previous work focused on developing machine‐learning classifiers restricted to specific disasters, such as storms or wildfires. We investigate for the first time methods to detect such message...

This paper develops a duopolistic discounted marketing model with linear advertising costs and advertised prices for mature markets still in expansion. Generic and predatory advertising effects are combined together in the model. We characterize a class of advertising models with some lowered production costs. For such a class of models, advertisin...

We extend the scope of monetary aggregation beyond capital certain assets that make up central bank data sets and identify groups of assets that form monetary aggregates composed of both capital certain and risky, capital uncertain, assets. We construct monetary aggregates for the US and UK using a superlative index and relax a key assumption of th...

The June 2016 UK referendum on continued EU membership where the people of Scotland voted to remain, while the rest of the United Kingdom voted to leave, once again makes the issue of whether Scotland is an optimal currency area very topical. England voted strongly to leave Europe while Scotland backed remain by 62% to 38%. The Scottish government...

Consumer spending is a vital macroeconomic indicator. In this paper we present a novel method for predicting future consumer spending from social media data. In contrast to previous work that largely relied on sentiment analysis, the proposed method models consumer spending from purchase intentions found on social media. Our experiments with time s...

Social media proves to be a major source of timely information during mass emergencies. A considerable amount of recent research has aimed at developing methods to detect social media messages that report such disasters at early stages. In contrast to previous work, the goal of this paper is to identify messages relating to a very broad range of po...

Empirical work investigating commonality in liquidity and systematic liquidity risk utilizes various different estimators of systematic liquidity. This chapter is the first to compare and contrast such estimators. We distinguish two classes of systematic liquidity estimators that both have many followers in the literature: (1) weighted average esti...

Disaster risk information is spatial in nature and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) play an important key role by the services they provide to society. In this context, to risk management and governance, in general, and to civil protection, specifically (termed differently in many countries, and includes, for instance: c...

The changing dynamic of crisis management suggests that we should be leveraging social media and accessible geotagged text data to assist with making emergency evacuations more effective and increasing the efficiency of emergency first responders. This chapter presents a preliminary visualization tool for automatically clustering geotagged text dat...

Social Media usage in evacuations and emergency management represents a rapidly expanding field of study. Our paper thus provides quantitative insight into a serious practical problem. Within this context a behavioural approach is key. We discuss when facilitators should consider model-based interventions amid further implications for disaster comm...

Generally, people have a good understanding of their local areas. Hence, encouraging them to share this tacit knowledge with local authorities, urban designers and city planners could help improve the quality of public space design significantly. However, persuading people to share their concerns/ideas about their areas, especially through a digita...

Organizations increasingly rely on digital tools, such as social media, to harvest public opinion on a variety of issues ranging from brand reputations to political debates. One area in which digital tools have great potential is in consultation on design of public spaces. Public organizations are expected to consult with users of a public space be...

Evacuating a city is a complex problem that involves issues of governance, preparedness education, warning, information sharing, population dynamics, resilience and recovery. As natural and anthropogenic threats to cities grow, it is an increasingly pressing problem for policy makers and practitioners. The book is the result of a unique interdiscip...

In this chapter we discuss the mathematical modelling of the next generation of smarter evacuations. Alongside a burgeoning literature on resilience we formulate a quantitative decision-making framework through which Social Media can be used to deliver more efficient evacuations. Our approach is flexible and improves upon existing models by allowin...

This chapter aims to investigate the construction of monetary aggregates in Taiwan using a monthly data series from January 1, 1970 to December 2013 inclusive. Taiwan is a country of great economic interest in the post-recession era. Financial innovation in Taiwan has been vast, outpacing that in the USA and UK; moreover the money supply still play...

Abstract: Prompted by a real-life observation in the UK retail market, a two-player Prisoners’ Dilemma model of an alliance between two firms is adapted to include the response of a rival firm, resulting in a version of a three-player Prisoners’ Dilemma. We use this to analyse the impact on the stability of the alliance of the rival’s competition,...

Prompted by a real-life observation in the UK retail market, a two-player Prisoners' Dilemma model of an alliance between two firms is adapted to include the response of a rival firm, resulting in a version of a three-player Prisoners' Dilemma. We use this to analyse the impact on the stability of the alliance of the rival's competition, either wit...

This paper investigates whether investors are compensated for taking on commonality risk in equity portfolios. A large literature documents the existence and the causes of commonality in illiquidity, but the implications for investors are less understood. We find a return premium for commonality risk in NYSE stocks that is both economically and sta...

This article employs nonlinear smooth transition models to analyze the relationship between upstream and midstream prices of petroleum products. We test for the presence of nonlinearities in price linkages using both weekly series constructed using official EU procedures and also daily industry series applied for the first time. Our results show th...

Automatically extracting actionable knowledge from on-line social media has attracted a growing interest from both academia and the industry. However, little clarity exists in relation to what actionable knowledge is, whether it can be measured and where it is more likely to be found. This paper makes an attempt at answering the above questions by...

Common currency areas and Asian common currency areas in particular are highly topical and somewhat controversial areas for research. We explore the hypothesis that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet necessary conditions for forming a common currency area and whether Taiwan appears a natural member of such an area. We te...

The principal objective of this paper is to compare the performance of the Divisia M4 monetary index with the standard Simple Sum measure of broad money in the context of composite leading indicators of inflation in the United Kingdom. Inflation targeting is an important component of current UK monetary policy and the construction of composite lead...

This paper reports on VoiceYourView, a kind of intelligent kiosk, which uses speech recognition and natural language processing to gather the public's creative input on the public space designs. Over a six week period, VoiceYourView was deployed in a public space and 2000 design critiques were collected from 600 people. The paper shows that people...

We test for the existence of a long-run money demand relationship for the UK involving household-sector Divisia and simple sum monetary indexes for the period from 1977 to 2008. We construct our Divisia index using non-break-adjusted levels and break-adjusted flows following the Bank of England. We test for cointegration between the real Divisia an...

This article presents out-of-sample inflation forecasting results based on relative price variability and skewness. It is demonstrated that forecasts on long horizons of 1.5-2 years are significantly improved if the forecast equation is augmented with skewness.

This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. We explore a wide range of different definitions of money, including different methods of aggregation and different collections of included monetary assets. In our forecasting e...

This paper examines the inflation "pass-through" problem in American monetary policy, defined as the relationship between changes in the growth rates of individual goods and the subsequent economy-wide rate of growth of consumer prices. Granger causality tests robust to structural breaks are used to establish initial relationships. Then, feedforwar...

This paper provides the most fully comprehensive evidence to date on whether or not monetary aggregates are valuable for forecasting US inflation in the early to mid 2000s. We explore a wide range of different definitions of money, including different methods of aggregation and different collections of included monetary assets. In our forecasting e...

This chapter introduces a mechanism for generating a series of rules that characterize the money-price relationship for the United States, defined as the relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and inflation. Monetary Services Indicator (MSI) component data is used to train a selection of candidate feedforward neural networks. T...

Full-Scale Optimization (FSO) is a utility maximization approach to portfolio choice problems that has theoretical appeal but that suffers from computational burden in large scale problems. We apply the heuristic technique differential evolution to solve FSO-type asset selection problems of 97 assets under complex utility functions rendering rough...

Numerous studies find that monetary models of exchange rates cannot beat a random walk model. Such a finding, however, is not surprising given that such models are built upon money demand functions and traditional money demand functions appear to have broken down in many developed countries. In this article, we investigate whether using a more stab...

We use the Fleissig and Whitney [Fleissig, A.R., Whitney, G.A., 2003. A new PC-based test for Varian's weak separability conditions. Journal of Business and Economics Statistics 21 (1), 133–144] weak separability test to determine admissible levels of monetary aggregation for the Euro area. We find that the Euro area monetary assets in M2 and M3 ar...

Matching university places to students is not as clear cut or as straightforward as it ought to be. By investigating the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions in medicine and related subjects, we show that a procedure designed to give an advantage to students with excellent school grades actually harm...

In this paper we compare the performance of three indices in an inflation forecasting experiment. The evidence not only suggests that an evolved neural network is superior to traditionally trained networks in the majority of cases, but also that a risky money index performs at least as well as the Bank of England Divisia index when combined with in...

This study is the first of its kind to focus on the effect of interest-rate tiers on aggregate measures of the monetary services flow. We address the role and impact of measurement errors in building monetary index numbers directly. Using a unique data set obtained from Barclays Bank plc, we construct two adjusted UK household sector measures of th...

This paper compares two methods to predict inflation rates in Europe. One method uses a standard back propagation neural network and the other uses an evolutionary approach, where the network weights and the network architecture are evolved. Results indicate that back propagation produces superior results. However, the evolving network still produc...

Portfolio choice by full-scale optimization applies the empirical return distribution to a parameterized utility function, and the maximum is found through numerical optimization. Using a portfolio choice setting of three UK equity indices we identify several utility functions featuring loss aversion and prospect theory, under which full-scale opti...

In this paper, the exchange rate forecasting performance of neural network models are evaluated against the random walk, autoregressive moving average and generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models. There are no guidelines available that can be used to choose the parameters of neural network models and therefore, the parameter...

Weak separability is a key admissibility property in the Divisia approach to monetary aggregation. We test groups of U.K. household sector monetary assets for weak separability using new data underlying the Bank of England s benchmark revision of its household sector Divisia index. Nonparametric tests are used to identify four monetary asset groupi...

Consumers complain that retail prices of petroleum products increase instantly whenever prices of crude oil increase but take a long time to fall after crude oil price decreases. This apparent discrepancy attracts significant attention in the applied literature, as it might imply a welfare transfer from individual consumers to big oil companies. Un...

Divisia money is a monetary aggregate that gives each component an assigned weight. We use an evolutionary neural network to calculate new Divisia weights for each component utilising the Bank of England monetary data for the U.K. We propose a new money aggregate using our newly derived weights to carry out quantitative inflation prediction. The re...

In the Full-Scale Optimization approach the complete empirical financial return probability distribution is considered; and the utility maximizing solution is found through numerical optimization. Using a portfolio choice setting of three UK equity indices we identify several utility functions featuring loss aversion and prospect theory; under whic...

This paper analyzes rigidities in the behavior of mark-up on petroleum products in the New York area using a new set of high-frequency data. We use a methodology that accounts both for deterministic and stochastic nature of petrol prices. The results indicate that the adjustment to the long run equilibrium mark-up is non-linear with adjustment spee...

This paper analyses horizontal and vertical price dynamics in the EU petroleum markets. The results indicate that the cross-country price differentials have significant impact on the local price adjustments. We investigate the cross-national price spill-overs and find that the extent of the welfare transfer due to asymmetric price transmission, whe...

This chapter introduces a mechanism for generating a series of rules that characterize the money-price relationship for the United States, defined as the relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and inflation. Monetary Services Indicator (MSI) component data is used to train a selection of candidate feedforward neural networks. T...

Abstract This study employs an error-correction SETAR model to analyse the non-linearities in the behaviour of the mark-up on costs charged by the filling stations in the New York metropolitan area. While usual price transmission gained significant attention in the literature, the mark-up portion of the price has not been analysed to date. The resu...

We provide evidence that higher moments of the relative price distribution improve out-of-sample forecasts of inflation. Further, we show how theoretically consistent higher moments can be calculated by expanding the seminal work by Theil (1967). Results presented here are of direct relevance to monetary authorities, policy analysts and academic ec...

This paper compares the out-of-sample inflation forecasting performance of two non-linear models; a neural network and a Markov switching autoregressive (MS-AR) model. We find that predictable non-linearities in inflation are best accounted for by the MS-AR model.

This paper introduces a mechanism for generating a series of rules that characterize the money-price relationship, defined as the relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and inflation. Divisia component data is used to train a selection of candidate feedforward neural networks. The selected network is mined for rules, expressed...

This paper provides the most complete evidence to date on the importance of monetary aggregates as a policy tool in an inflation forecasting experiment. Every possible definition of 'money' in the USA is being considered for the full data period (1960 - 2006), in addition to two different approaches to constructing the benchmark asset, using the mo...

This paper uses stochastic index number theory to propose a measure of core inflation based on the idiosyncratic persistence in individual CPI component price series. Our index is closely related to Diewert's (1995) neo-Edgeworthian stochastic price index. In part, we also seek to provide a core price index useful for to policymakers for measuring...

This is the front matter from the book, William A. Barnett and Jane Binner (eds.), Functional Structure and Approximation in Econometrics, published in 2004 by Elsevier in its Contributions to Economic Analysis monograph series. The front matter includes the Table of Contents, Volume Introduction, and Section Introductions by Barnett and Binner and...

Divisia component data is used in the training of an Aggregate Feedforward Neural Network (AFFNN), a general-purpose connectionist system designed to assist with data mining activities. The neural network is able to learn the money-price relationship, defined as the relationships between the rate of growth of the money supply and inflation. Learned...

The purpose of this study is to contrast the forecasting performance of two non-linear models, a regime-switching vector autoregressive model (RS-VAR) and a recurrent neural network (RNN), to that of a linear benchmark VAR model. Our specific forecasting experiment is U.K. inflation and we utilize monthly data from 1969 to 2003. The RS-VAR and the...

We evaluate the performance of composite leading indicators of turning points of inflation in the Euro area, constructed by combining the techniques of Fourier analysis and Kalman filters with the National Bureau of Economic Research methodology. In addition, the study compares the empirical performance of Euro Simple Sum and Divisia monetary aggre...

Linear models reach their limitations in applications with nonlinearities in the data. In this paper new empirical evidence is provided on the relative Euro inflation forecasting performance of linear and non-linear models. The well established and widely used univariate ARIMA and multivariate VAR models are used as linear forecasting models wherea...

This paper identifies the key institutional factors that influence loan loss rates in Community Development Finance Institutions in the UK. Traditional bank credit assessment puts the blame of poor loan performance largely on the borrower. This is the first study of its kind to examine institutional characteristics of 16 CDFIs in the UK and assess...

Accuracy in the measurement of money is important for economists. The conventional method is to simply sum the various constituent liquid liabilities of banks. This method of arriving at broad money aggregates is seriously flawed and an important alternative is the Divisia weighted index, in which the components are weighted on the basis of the mon...

The performance of a "capital certain" Divisia index constructed using the same components included in the Bank of England"s MSI plus national savings; a "risky" Divisia index constructed by adding bonds, shares and unit trusts to the list of assets included in the first index; and a capital certain simple sum index for comparison is compared. nce...

In this paper the standard prisoners' dilemma is embedded in environmental conditions in which the interaction takes place. This provides a theoretical background to the analysis of the empirical studies which indicate that including additional factors when considering an alliance is very important. We show that such an approach, though theoretical...

This paper tests the weak separability of the assets in the Bank of England's household-sector Divisia index from 1977Q1 to 2000Q4. The study is based on a revealed preference framework and uses a nonparametric procedure that jointly tests necessary and sufficient conditions for weak separability, allows for incomplete adjustment of expenditure on...

We compare the empirical performance of a capital certain monetary services index and an index that is extended to contain assets with substantial interest rate risk, such as unit trusts, within a cointegration money demand framework for the UK. Technological changes and innovations have increased the liquidity of risky assets and recent developmen...

In this article a Divisia monetary index is constructed for the Taiwan economy, and its inflation forecasting potential is compared with that of its traditional simple sum counterpart. The Divisia index is adjusted in two ways to allow for the financial liberalization that Taiwan has experienced since the 1970s. The powerful artificial intelligence...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

This chapter discusses the development of an approach that uses an evolutionary strategy as a predictive tool. This approach is simple to implement yet produces results that compare favorably with the neural network predictions. A preferred inflation-forecasting model is achieved using the networks that employ a Divisia M2 measure of money, adjuste...

This paper introduces a mechanism for generating human-readable and machine-executable rules that characterize the money-price relationship, defined as the relationship between the rate of growth of the money supply and inflation. Divisia component data is used to train an Aggregate Feedforward Neural Network (AFFNN), a general-purpose connectionis...

The principal objective of this paper is to develop a new approach to the construction of composite leading indicators using the signal extraction capabilities of the powerful Kalman filter. The resultant leading indicator properties are found to outperform those already derived using the Central Statistical Office methodology in the UK. A secondar...

Previous work has used neural networks to predict the rate of inflation in Taiwan using four measures of `money' (simple sum and three Divisia measures). In this work a new approach is developed that uses an evolutionary strategy as a predictive tool. This approach is simple to implement yet produces results that compare favourably with the neural...