We develop a non-dynamic panel smooth transition regression model with fixed individual effects. The model is useful for describing heterogenous panels, with regression coefficients that vary across individuals and over time. Heterogeneity is allowed for by assuming that these coefficients are...

The paper proposes a theory of the anti-competitive effects of debt finance based on the interaction between capital structure, managerial incentives, and firms' ability to sustain collusive agreements. It shows that shareholders' commitments that reduce conflicts with debtholders - such as...

We report evidence that salience may have economically significant effects on homeowners' borrowing behavior, through a bias in favour of less salient but more costly loans. We outline a simple model in which some consumers are biased. Under plausible assumptions, the bias may affect prices in...

Capital structure studies have generally been aimed at studying the determinants of optimal leverage. Empirically, the focus is, however, on studying the association between observed leverage and a set of explanatory variables. This approach has a number of shortcomings. First, the observed...

The common approach in empirical capital structure research has been to study the determinants of optimal leverage by studying the association between observed leverage and a set of explanatory variables. This approach has two major shortcomings. First, the observed leverage need not necessarily...

The effect of tax discrimination of equity capital on the simultaneous choice of financial structure and operational risk is studied in a model with symmetrical information, risk neutral investors, bankruptcy costs and small open economy assumptions. Taxes are either proportional to the amount...

In this paper we test for existence of cointegration between health expenditure and GDP using data from 19 OECD countries for the period 1960-1995. Country-by-country and panel results based on the Johansen multivariate likelihood-based inference and a new panel test for cointegration rank are...

In this paper I present two new Lagrange multiplier test statistics designed for testing the null of GARCH (1,1), against the alternative of asymmetric GARCH. For one test the alternative is the generalized QARCH (1,1) model of Sentana [1995], and for the other the alternative is the logistic...

This paper investigates the effects of different health systems on cost efficiency in inpatient health care among the OECD countries. The results indicate that public contract systems are less efficient and that public integrated health systems are more efficient than public reimbursement systems.

This paper proposes an approach to specify and estimate multiple input, multiple output production frontiers and technical efficiency using a stochastic ray frontier production model A possible model extension is to incorporate a technical efficiency effects model to allow estimation of the...