We critically review the recent literature on currency unions and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic effects of the euro. In particular, and in contrast with estimates of the...

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Modern trade agreements contain a large number of provisions in addition to tariff reductions, in areas as diverse as services trade, competition policy, trade-related investment measures, or public procurement. Existing research has struggled with overfitting and severe multicollinearity...

We note that the existence of the maximum likelihood estimates in Poisson regression depends on the data configuration, and propose a strategy to identify the existence of the problem and to single out the regressors causing it.

This paper develops a count data model for credit scoring which allows the estimation of default probabilities using incomplete contracts data. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that it permits a more efficient use of the data, including that for the most recent clients. Moreover,...

Understanding and quantifying the determinants of the number of sectors or firms exporting in a given country is of relevance for the assessment of trade policies. Estimation of models for the number of exporting sectors, however, poses a challenge because the dependent variable has both a lower...