By generalizing Hamiltons model of the US business cycle to a three-regime Markov-switching vector autoregressive model, this paper analyzes regime shifts in the stochastic process of economic growth in the US, Japan and Europe over the last four decades. Empirical evidence is established for...

Time invariance of factor loadings is a standard assumption in the analysis of large factor models.  Yet, this assumption may be restrictive unless parameter shifts are mild (i.e., local to zero).  In this paper we develop a new testing procedure to detect big breaks in these loadings at...

General unrestricted models (GUMs) may include important individual determinants, many small relevant effects, and irrelevant variables.  Automatic model selection procedures can handle perfect collinearity and more candidate variables than observations, allowing substantial dimension reduction...

A new test for non-linearity in the conditional mean is proposed using functions of the principal components of regressors.  The test extends the non-linearity tests based on Kolmogorov-Gavor polynomials (Thursby and Schmidt, 1977, Tsay, 1986, and Terasvirta, Lin and Granger, 1993), but...

Interpersonal relationships have long been suspected of shaping agrarian institutions, probably because weak formal institutions must be supplemented by interpersonal trust. This is particularly true for informal risk sharing, a fundamental risk coping mechanism for the rural poor (e.g. Mark R....

This paper presents a pairwise matching model with two-sided information asymmetry to analyse the impact of information costs on endogenous network building and matching by information intermedairies. The framework innovates by examining the role of information costs on incentives for trade...

A two-sided, pair-wise matching model is developed to analyse the strategic interaction between two information intermediaries who compete in commission rates and network size, giving rise to a fragmented duopoly market structure. The model suggests that network competition between information...

This paper uses data on judicial citations to explore whether the diffusion and/or application of knowledge within an organisation is affected by worker connectivity. Developing a simple model of discretionary citations, we distinguish between two hypotheses: knowledge diffusion whereby...

Drawing insights from the literature on credit and labor markets and from the author`s own survey work on contractual practices among manufacturers and traders in Africa, this paper investigates the spontaneous emergence of markets in the presence of heterogeneous agents. Using a dynamic game...