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This past summer, I participated in the Quantitative Analysis Center’s Summer Apprenticeship Program and served as a research assistant for Professor Masami Imai of the Economics Department. We conducted an event-study analysis to assess the impact of the Bank of Japan’s regime change and nonconventional monetary policy on asset prices.

Since the 1990s, stagnation and deflation have plagued the Japanese economy. In an effort to stimulate growth, the Bank of Japan has adopted non-traditional monetary policy measures of forward guidance of future policy rates, targeted asset purchases, and quantitative easing. Specifically, we considered the effectiveness of the Bank of Japan’s most recent policies under the new leadership of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda.

From our research, we found that across the majority of nonconventional monetary policy announcements, interest rates decreased as expected. However, we also observed that the Nikkei Index and dollar/yen rate failed to move in the predicted directions. Targeted asset purchases and quantitative easing were found to have insignificant effects on asset prices. We observed that nonconventional monetary policy measures are associated with only temporary changes in asset prices.

As expected, our results show that the Bank of Japan’s regime change under Governor Kuroda had the most significant effect on asset prices. On April 4, 2013, the Bank of Japan announced its plan to double the monetary base and conduct open-ended asset purchases as part of “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing”. The announcement generated significant effects on interest rates and the dollar/yen exchange rate. Long-term interest rates on Japanese Government Bonds, spanning from the yield on the 6-year JGB to the yield on the 40-year JGB, significantly decreased after the announcement. The Nikkei closed up 272 points on the announcement date, but the movement failed to be significant.

Through this research, I gained a strong understanding of the Japanese banking system and also developed proficiency in Stata and R statistical packages. I have sharpened my quantitative and analytical skills through my work with Professor Imai and Professor Kaparakis, and I look forward to continuing to assist Professor Imai with his research in the spring.

–Jessica Hanway

Tags: Alumni, Kaparakis, QAC

I stumbled across these numbers when I was searching around Business Insider online and found them particularly interesting since I am a user for almost all these websites and social media tools. I also must confess that it’s only 10 am and I’ve sent 17 snaps via snapchat already.

 Interesting Statistics in the World of Business and Social Media:

Advertisers can now target users on Twitter by which operating system and version they use, specific device, and Wi-Fi connectivity. (Twitter Blog)

Snapchat’s owners turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. (Wall Street Journal)

WeChat now has 272 million monthly active users, up 15% from the previous quarter. (Tencent)

Dropbox now has 200 million users. (TechCrunch)

Google generates more revenue than the magazine and newspaper industries in the U.S. (Business Insider)

Taken from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/19/how-many-users-does-snapchat-have/

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-is-driving-more-sales-2013-11#ixzz2lOArVgOc

By Dana Louie

Here’s a useful yet underrated STATA command to add to your go-to’s:

mdesc

This command describes your missing data for you. It was helpful this summer when I was trying to replicate findings that had been produced two years ago when less data was available. I had to figure out what of my data needed to be coded out and was able to check my work using this command.

First, you’ll need to install the package by first giving Stata the command: findit mdesc. Then you can use mdesc with or without a variable list after the command. Hope that this comes in handy sometime!

By Dana Louie

Tags: STATA

I graduated from Wesleyan in 2012 as a psychology major. While at Wesleyan I took the QAC 201 course to complete my statistics requirement. Initially I was resistant to data analysis work; I thought it was too disconnected from the people and issues I cared about and I did not understand how statistics could address the problems that I thought were important.  QAC 201 really changed that for me, I came to understand that I could use stats to better understand those issues and to inform progress towards solutions. For me, the QAC course was at the intersection of Wesleyan ideas about social justice and practical, empirical skills that could inform action. By the end of the course, I was hooked. Because of the quantitative analysis training I received from QAC 201, I had the opportunity to do a semester long independent study with Professor Lisa Dierker. The summer before my senior year I participated in  the QAC summer fellowship, a summer program where students are paid to take applied statistics classes and do research.  During my last year at Wesleyan, I used the skills that I learned in the summer fellowship to complete an honors thesis on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and substance use disorder comorbidity among Vietnam veterans.

After graduation I worked briefly for a consulting firm and then left for a more research oriented job.  I am now on my first year of a two year service at the National Center for PTSD which is part of the Boston VA Healthcare System. I work with a group that is looking at post-combat mental health outcomes among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.  Specifically we are interested in figuring out how to predict who has bad mental health outcomes (PTSD and suicidality) after deployments.  We also do a lot of work with female veterans and the role of military sexual trauma in mental health outcomes. I love my job for the same reasons that I loved my first QAC course; I get to use data work to inform the way I understand what is going on with an individual patient or participant that comes into our lab.  My day-to-day work is a wonderful mix of participant interaction that is often emotionally demanding, and stats work that is cognitively demanding.

I felt very well prepared for my current position because I had a background in thinking about, working with, and writing about data.  This let me hit the ground running when I first started at the VA and let me take opportunities to work and write with more senior people in my lab. Almost every job opportunity I have had since college has been directly or indirectly the result of the training I got at the QAC.

Tags: Alumni, Dierker, QAC

On February 12th, Wesleyan will have the chance to hear one of the the nation’s most prominent advocates for shaking up the social sciences with the possibilities of quantitative methods and models. Nicholas Christakis will be here to discuss his passion for the power of social networks. His talk is called “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.”

Nicholas Christakis is the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. Tellingly, he holds appointments both in the Sociology Department and the School of Medicine. His work has frequently been in the news. He and his collaborators often use large-scale quantitative analysis to understand the nature of social and pscho-social behaviours, for instance examining the nature of medical prognoses or the effects of bereavement. Most prominently, he has studied the role of social networks in explaining the demographic and epidemiological characteristics of such things as obesity, quitting smoking, and happiness itself. He has showed how much whom you know will determine many of your key medical characteristics and behaviours and how they might change.

Christakis Lab at Yale : http://www.nicholaschristakis.net/

TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html

NYT op-ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/lets-shake-up-the-social-sciences.html