The relevance of transport costs has increased as liberalization continues to reduce artificial barriers to trade. Countries need to adopt policies to “get closer†to global markets. Can improvements in infrastructure and regulation reduce transport costs? Is it worthwhile to implement...

Decision theorists claim that an ordinal measure of risk may be sufficient for an agent to make a rational choice under uncertainty. We propose a measure of financial risk, namely the Varying Cross-sectional Risk (VCR), that is based on a ranking of returns. VCR is defined as the probability of...

In this paper we propose a new test statistic that considers multiple structural breaks to analyse the non-stationarity of a panel data set. The methodology is based on the common factor analysis in an attempt to allow for some sort of dependence across the individuals. Thus allowing for...

Bootstrap aggregating or Bagging, introduced by Breiman (1996a), has been proved to be effective to improve on unstable forecast. Theoretical and empirical works using classification, regression trees, variable selection in linear and non-linear regression have shown that bagging can generate...

This paper uses DOGEV model for modelling determinates of poverty in Eritrea by employing Eritrean Household Income and Expenditure Survey 1996/97 data. Education impacts welfare differently across poverty categories and there are pockets of poverty in the educated population sub group. Effect...

Tests and estimation for changes in the coefficients of linear regression models, particularly the analysis of covariance and the Chow tests, are well known to econometricians and are widely used. This paper demonstrates that analogous estimation can also be constructed in simultaneous equation...

The adverse effects of excessive alcohol consumption are well-known. Of great concern to policy makers is to understand the potentially different drivers for consumers of different levels of alcohol consumption. Using unit record data from the Australian Drug Strategy Household Surveys, this...

Using 20-year panel data, this paper tests Japanese companies' sequential decisions: (1) to invest abroad or not and (2) if so, what ownership strategy for that local company to be employed. In addition to transaction advantage emphasized by traditional studies on FDI, the focus is the role of...

The emergence of powerful, big box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot has enhanced the interest among both academics and non-academics in the effects of countervailing power. One of the major concerns expressed by some commentators is that rising countervailing power will lead to poorer...

In this paper, we model networks of relational contracts. We explore sanctioning power within these networks under different information technologies depending on the shape of the network. The value of the relational network lies in the enforcement of cooperative agreements which would not be...