We point out that fiscal multipliers derived from SVAR-models include the predicted future path of policy instruments. After the initial shock, net taxes and government expenditures react to each other and are autocorrelated. In a counterfactual simulation, we report fiscal multipliers that...

We use US county-level data to estimate convergence rates for 22 individual states. We find significant heterogeneity. E.g., the California estimate is 19.9% and the New York estimate is 3.3%. Convergence rates are essentially uncorrelated with income levels.

Countercyclical government spending offers social protection to the vulnerable when economies move into recession. This paper questions the extent to which governments are able to spend countercyclically and the extent to which social expenditures are likely to be countercyclical. An analysis of...

This paper tests the predictions that (i) sub-central government expenditures are procyclical and (ii) sub-central government expenditures are likely to be more procyclical than central government spending. The predictions are based on the importance of ‘voracity effects’ and on the...

We analyze electorally motivated public spending using disaggregated expenditure data. Election cycles in total expenditures and in specific sub-categories mainly exist in newly democratized Eastern European countries. However, electorally motivated spending policies are ineffective means to...

This paper explores whether the usage of tax revenues affects tax-compliance behavior. I design a laboratory experiment in which subjects make tax-reporting decisions and are randomly assigned to treatments that differ in tax-revenue use. The results indicate that compliance depends on...

This article tests the linearity assumption underlying the popular heterogeneous autoregressive model for realized volatility (HAR-RV). We implement a consistent model specification test that is robust to both distributional and model misspecification. We find that, using a nonparametric HAR-RV...

We proposed a method to estimate extreme conditional quantiles by combining quantile GARCH model of Xiao and Koenker (2009) and extreme value theory (EVT) approach. We first estimate the latent volatility process using the information of intermediate quantiles. We then apply EVT to the tail...

We examine the growth process of the largest cities in India for the post economic reform period 1991–2011 to analyze Gibrat’s and Zipf’s laws by applying nonparametric estimation. The results from stochastic kernel, contour plots, and expected growth rate and variance conditional on city...

Testing for asymmetric information in insurance markets has become a very important issue in the empirical literature in the last years. We analyze the (private) accident insurance, which has not been analyzed before in the literature, but covers one of the most important risks faced by...