This paper analyses the time series properties of the unemployment rates of the 50 US States, as well as the global rate of the USA. Our results, based on the use of ADF-type tests, show that the inclusion of some breaks is vital in order to reduce the persistence on these rates. Thus, we can...

This paper shows that the acceptance of the Zipf's Law may sometimes be the result of a spurious artifact. By way of some Monte Carlo exercises we provide evidence in favour of the fact that the Zipf's law can be spuriously accepted when the variable being studied is generated by a random...