The paper studies technical inefficiency in the railway systems of ten countries of the European Union. A new approach is used which permits the disaggregation of inefficiency by factor of production to result in estimates of input-specific technical inefficiency. The cost structure is...

Spillovers have usually been undertaken at the country level, the spillover effects can be more definitive only if the analysis is conducted at the industry-level. This paper therefore attempts to identify spillovers by disentangling technological innovations into intra- and inter-national...

In a stochastic frontier setting, we examine technical efficiency in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Evidence suggests that in addition to economic indicators, political and social ones play a key role in development and frontier technical efficiency profiles. The MENA have been...

We explore the relationship between financial reforms and income inequality using a panel of 29 countries over 1975-2005. We extend panel unit root tests to allow for the presence of some financial-reform covariates and further suggest an associated but novel, semi-parametric approach. Results...

We analyse the interaction between legal origins and ethnic heterogeneity and their combined impact on national efficiency. We hypothesise that in the presence of high ethnic heterogeneity common-law system performs worse than civil-law one in terms of economic efficiency. Our empirical tests on...

The relationship between recessions and productivity has been the focus of an important body of theoretical and empirical research in the last two decades. We contribute to this literature by presenting new evidence on the evolution of productivity in the aftermath of recessions. Our method...

This note revisits the temporal causality between exchange rates and fundamentals put forward by Engel and West (2005). We analyze the causal link within multivariate VARs by making use of the concept of multi-step causality. Our results show that, considering information content beyond...

We look at syndication in the venture capital industry. Investments conducted by syndicates are believed to have better chances of being successful, measured by the survival probability of portfolio companies or by successful exits. Using a novel and large dataset, covering several countries,...

Using a novel methodology, we offer new evidence that a threshold relationship exists for Okun's law. We use a logistic smoothed transition regression (LSTR) model where possible threshold endogeneity is addressed based on copula theory. We also suggest a new test of the linearity hypothesis...

We look at syndication in the venture capital industry. Investments conducted by syndicates are believed to have better chances of being successful, measured by the survival probability of portfolio companies or by successful exits. Using a novel and large dataset, covering several countries,...