We consider the issue of Block Bootstrap methods in processes that exhibit strong dependence. The main difficulty is to transform the series in such way that implementation of these techniques can provide an accurate approximation to the true distribution of the test statistic under...

This paper studies optimal decision rules for a decision maker who can consult two experts in an environment without monetary payments. This extends the previous work by Holmström (1984) and Alonso and Matouschek (2008) who consider environments with one expert. In order to derive optimal...

Existing studies of trust formation in U.S. metropolitan areas have found that trust is lower when there is more income inequality and greater racial fragmentation. I add to this literature by examining the role of income inequality between racial groups (racial income inequality). I find that...

The prevailing usage of the concept of complex humanitarian emergency, even if valuable, is often fuzzy and misleading, and rarely articulated in a consistent framework, which could be used advantageously for research, interdisciplinary exchange, and policy making and analysis. We analyse...

This paper investigates if the impact of uncertainty shocks on the US economy has changed over time. To this end, we develop an extended Factor Augmented VAR model that simultaneously allows the estimation of a measure of uncertainty and its time-varying impact on a range of variables. We find...

This paper evaluates the performance of structural VAR models in estimating the impact of credit supply shocks. In a simple Monte-Carlo experiment, we generate data from a DSGE model that features bank lending and credit supply shocks and use SVARs to try and recover the impulse responses to...

This paper evaluates the performance of a variety of structural VAR models in estimating the impact of credit supply shocks. Using a Monte-Carlo experiment, we show that identification based on sign and quantity restrictions and via external instruments is effective in recovering the underlying...

A growing empirical literature has considered the impact of uncertainty using SVAR models that include proxies for uncertainty shocks as endogenous variables. In this paper we consider the possible impact of measurement error in the uncertainty shock proxies on the estimated impulse responses...

Testing the rank of a matrix of estimated parameters is key in a large variety of econometric modelling scenarios. This paper describes general methods to test for the rank of a matrix, and provides details on a variety of modelling scenarios in the econometrics literature where these tests are...

Identification in the context of multivariate state space modelling involves the specification of the dimension of the state vector. One identification approach requires an estimate of the rank of a Hankel matrix. The most frequently used approaches of rank determination rely on information...