This paper, which is one of the first to estimate productivity in retail electricity for a European country after liberalisation, analyses the effect of ownership and governance structure by using a unique dataset of German electricity retailers from 2003 to 2012. An innovative service...

This paper studies the productivity impact of heterogeneous capital inputs of selected EU-15 member countries and of the U.S. at the macroeconomic level. The stochastic possibility frontiers approach of Battese and Coelli (1992) applied here is used to identify neutralities or non-neutralities...

As panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) models can include several countries and variables in one system, they are well suited for global spillover analyses. However, PVARs require restrictions to ensure the feasibility of the estimation. The present paper uses a selection prior for a data-based...

Structural VAR models are frequently identified using sign restrictions on contemporaneous impulse responses. We develop a methodology that can handle a set of prior distributions that is much larger than the one currently allowed for by traditional methods. We then develop an importance sampler...

This study models maximum temperatures in Switzerland monitored in twelve locations using the Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. The parameters of the GEV distribution are determined within a Bayesian framework. We find that the parameters of the underlying distribution underwent a...

We consider structural vector autoregressions identified through stochastic volatility. Our focus is on whether a particular structural shock is identified by heteroskedasticity without the need to impose any sign or exclusion restrictions. Three contributions emerge from our exercise: (i) a set...

This paper proposes a Bayesian approach to assess if the data support candidate set-identifying restrictions for Vector Autoregressive models. The researcher is uncertain about the validity of some sign restrictions that she is contemplating to use. She therefore expresses her uncertainty with a...

We reexamine whether pre-Volcker U.S. fiscal policy was active or passive. To do so, we estimate a DSGE model with monetary and fiscal policy interactions employing a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm (SMC) for posterior evaluation. Unlike existing studies, we do not have to treat each policy...

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of tax changes on the cross-sectional distribution of disposable income in the United States using a narrative identification approach. I distinguish between changes in personal and corporate income taxes and quantify the distributional effects on...