An employer-based sample of over 660,000 Czech and 260,000 Slovak workers is used to estimate the benefits of education in 1995 to 1997. By 1997 education of all types had become substantially more highly rewarded in both countries than it was either under communism or in the early years of the...

This paper studies the Gold Standard in Portugal. It was the first country in Europe to join Great Britain in 1854. The principle of free gold convertibility was abandoned in 1891. For the purposes of a macroeconomic study, we also extended the analysis up to 1913. Our study points out the...

This study aims to analyse the Portuguese economic policy of disinflation through a nominal stabilization policy of the Portuguese escudo. We study the pegging of the Portuguese escudo (PTE) to the Deutsch mark (DM) knowing the reputation of the Bundesbank for its anti- inflationary record and...

We study the impact of Japanese foreign exchange intervention on the volatility of the yen/dollar exchange rate since the early 1990s based on a GARCH framework. Using daily intervention data provided by the Japanese Ministry of Finance, we show that the success of interventions varies over...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between the quality of the Indian judiciary and the economic development of the Indian States and Union Territories. It evaluates this causality by analysing the development of the state-level per capita income and poverty rates. I define the...

This paper introduces an upgraded version of MSVARlib, a Gauss and Ox- Gauss compliant library, focusing on Multivariate Markov Switching Regressions in their most general specification. This new set of procedures allows to estimate, through classical optimization methods, models belonging to...

Using the Hodrick-Prescott filter, this paper examines the cyclical properties of the Italian labour market. Its main contribution is the empirical analysis of three different labour inputs - regular employees, regular self-employed and underground workers. Results from VAR models support the...

The paper develops a non-parametric, non-stationary framework for business-cycle dating based on an innovative statistical methodology known as Adaptive Weights Smoothing (AWS). The methodology is used both for the study of the individual macroeconomic time series relevant to the dating of the...

A methodology based on the multivariate generalized Butterwoth filter for extracting the business cycles of the whole economy and of its productive sectors is developed. The method is then illustrated through an application to the Italian gross value added time series of the main economic sectors.