Are certain groups of unemployed individuals hurt less by unemployment than others? This paper is an attempt to test the hypothesis that non- pecuniary costs of unemployment may vary between societies with different unemployment rates. Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show...

Are happiness patterns structurally the same when comparing poor and rich countries? Using cross-sectional data from the SALDRU93 survey, we show that the relationships between subjective well-being and socioeconomic variables have a similar structure and is U-shaped in age in South Africa as in...

This paper is the first of its kind to study quality of life responses of crime victims. Using cross-sectional data from the OHS97 survey of South Africa, we show that victims report significantly lower well-being than the non-victims, ceteris paribus. Happiness is lower for nonvictimized...

This paper identifies a subset of emerging markets that have higher than average expected returns and studies risk properties of this subset by investment simulations. It is found that: (1) the portfolio of "value" emerging markets generates superior returns, and (2) statistical measures of its...

The study examines the reasons for financial crises in 31 emerging market countries during 1980-2001. It estimates a probit model using 23 macroeconomic and financial sector variables. Traditional variables such as unemployment and inflation, as well as several indicators of indebtedness such as...

This paper develops and estimates an unobserved components model for purposes of monetary policy analysis and inflation targeting in a small open economy. Cyclical components are modeled as a multivariate linear rational expectations model of the monetary transmission mechanism, while trend...

Upon winning the 2002 presidential elections, event that considerably increased the Brazilian country risk levels and volatility, Lula celebrated by declaring: “hope has beaten fear”. Extending Une and Portugal (2004), the aim of this paper is twofold: to empirically test the interrelations...

In this paper we extend the macroeconometric model developed in Bagnai (2004) by linking it to a submodel for the Japanese economy, and we utilize this extended model to investigate several hypotheses of reduction in the US twin deficits. The Japanese submodel is specified and estimated along...

An important factor that helps distinquish between alternative balance of payments theories is the assumed causal relationship between the domestic credit and reserve components of a country's monetary base. This paper reports test results of this causal relationship in Austrailia, Belgium,...

Indicators of financial crisis generally do not have a good track record. This paper presents an early warning system (EWS) for six countries in Asia in which indicators do work. Our binary choice model, which has been estimated for the period 1970:01–2001.12, has the following features. We...