In 1998 Hungary embarked on a course of comprehensive pension reform. The reforms are likely to change the distribution of incomes of future generations. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. From a policy point of view, we analyse poverty and income inequality among pensioners in Hungary...

Copulas offer financial risk managers a powerful tool to model the dependence between the different elements of a portfolio and are preferable to the traditional, correlation-based approach. In this paper we show the importance of selecting an accurate copula for risk management. We extend...

This paper estimates a monetary policy reaction function for the ECB over the period 1999-2009. To allow for a potential shift in interest rate setting during the financial crisis, we permit a smooth transition from one set of parameters to another. The estimates show a swift change in the...

This paper empirically evaluates the effects of antidumping measures on the exports of protected firms. While antidumping protection raises the domestic sales of the more “traditional” non-exporting firms on the protected market with about 5%, it negatively affects the firm-level exports of...

In this paper we propose a new way to formulate optimal policy based on a quadratic intertemporal welfare function where the dynamic constraint is based on a VAR model of the economy which we call the PVAR method. We argue that the VAR under control should not be derived simply by replacing the...

A theoretical model for growth or inflation should be able to reproduce the empirical features of these variables better than competing alternatives. Therefore, it is common practice in the literature, whenever a new model is suggested, to compare its performance with that of a benchmark model....

I estimate a reaction function for the ECB using an ordered logit model for the period 1999-2009. Allowing for a smooth transition from one set of parameters to another, I detect a rapid change in middle of 2008.

We study ECB’s interest rate setting in 1999-2010 using a reaction function in which forecasts of future economic growth and inflation enter as regressors. Allowing for a gradual switch between two reaction functions, we detect a shift after Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008 when the...

The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the...

This paper presents an innovative approach to extracting factors which are shown to predict the VIX, the S&P 500 Realized Volatility and the Variance Risk Premium. The approach is innovative along two different dimensions, namely: (1) we extract factors from panels of filtered volatilities - in...