This paper evaluates the impact of microfinance on household consumption using a new, large and unique cross-section data set from Bangladesh. The richness of the data and program eligibility criterion allow the use of a number of non-experimental impact evaluation techniques, in particular...

This paper addresses the implications of the increasing skill intensity of cross-border migration flows for labour market outcomes in host countries. Specifically, we investigate the impact of the relative growth of skilled migrants on domestic wages in Australia over the last quarter century...

A Bayesian approach to option pricing is presented, in which posterior inference about the underlying returns process is conducted implicitly, via observed option prices. A range of models which allow for conditional leptokurtosis, skewness and time-varying volatility in returns, are considered,...

Age-sex-specific population forecasts are derived through stochastic population renewal using forecasts of mortality, fertility and net migration. Functional data models with time series coefficients are used to model age-specific mortality and fertility rates. As detailed migration data are...

The global linear trend with autocorrelated disturbances is a surprising omission from the M1 competition. This approach to forecasting is therefore evaluated using the 51 non-seasonal series from the competition. It is contrasted with a fully optimized version of Holts trend corrected...

We review the past 25 years of time series research that has been published in journals managed by the International Institute of Forecasters (Journal of Forecasting 1982-1985; International Journal of Forecasting 1985-2005). During this period, over one third of all papers published in these...

Influence diagnostics have become an important tool for statistical analysis since the seminal work by Cook (1986). In this paper we present a curvature-based diagnostic to access local influence of minor perturbations on the modified likelihood displacement in a regression model. Using the...

This paper has a focus on non-stationary time series formed from small non-negative integer values which may contain many zeros and may be over-dispersed. It describes a study undertaken to compare various suitable adaptations of the simple exponential smoothing method of forecasting on a...

In this paper we compare two non-stationary time series using non-parametric procedures. Evolutionary spectra are estimated for the two series. Randomization tests are performed on groups of spectral estimates for both related and independent time series. Simul ation studies show that in certain...

This article studies a simple, coherent approach for identifying and estimating error correcting vector autoregressive moving average (EC-VARMA) models. Canonical correlation analysis is implemented for both determining the cointegrating rank, using a strongly consistent method, and identifying...