A hallmark of modern labour economics is the close interplay between the development of theory, data sources and econometric testing. The evolution of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) provides a good illustration. The economics of UI has been a very active research area over...

This paper is concerned with methods for analysing spatial data. After initial discussion on the nature of spatial data, including the concept of randomness, we focus most of our attention on linear regression models that involve interactions between agents across space. The introduction of...

The dynamic behavior of the term structure of interest rates is difficult to replicate with models, and even models with a proven track record of empirical performance have underperformed since the early 2000s. On the other hand, survey expectations are accurate predictors of yields, but only...

This paper presents an innovative approach to extracting factors which are shown to predict the VIX, the S&P 500 Realized Volatility and the Variance Risk Premium. The approach is innovative along two different dimensions, namely: (1) we extract factors from panels of filtered volatilities - in...

This lecture is about how best to evaluate economic theories in macroeconomics and finance, and the lessons that can be learned from the past use and misuse of evidence. It is argued that all macro/finance models are `false' so should not be judged solely on the realism of their assumptions. The...

A fruitful emerging literature reveals that shocks to uncertainty can explain asset returns, business cycles and financial crises. The literature equates uncertainty shocks with changes in the variance of an innovation whose distribution is common knowledge. But how do such shocks arise? This...

If currency crises are triggered when the currency overvaluation hits a threshold, the expected magnitude of a devaluation, conditional on its occurrence, is substantially different from the unconditional expected currency overvaluation. That is not true if currency crises are triggered by...

This paper analyses the properties of multivariate tests of purchasing power parity (PPP) that fail to take heterogeneity in the speed of mean reversion across real exchange rates into account. We compare the performance of homogeneous and heterogeneous unit root testing methodologies. The...

The standard expectations augmented theory of ex-ante purchasing power parity (PPP), which was first developed by Roll, assumes that agents are risk neutral. A Covered Purchasing Power Condition is developed which holds for the general case of risk aversion. A risk-augmented form of ex-ante PPP...

This Paper analyses purchasing power parity (PPP) for the euro area. We study the impact of the introduction of the euro in 1999 on the behaviour of real exchange rates. We test the PPP hypothesis for a panel of real exchange rates within the euro area over the period 1973-2003. Our methodology...