There is no robust empirical support for the effect of financial incentives on the decision towork in self-employment rather than as a wage earner. In the literature, this is seen as apuzzle. We offer a focus on the opportunity cost, i.e. the wages given up as an employee.Information on income...

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze the impacts of credit and technologyshocks on business cycle dynamics, where firms rely on banks and households for capitalfinancing. Firms are identical ex ante but differ ex post due to different realizations of firmspecific technology...

It is argued that migration from Mexico to the US and its corresponding return migration aredetermined by international wage differentials and preferences for origin. We use a model ofjob search, savings and migration to show that job turnover is a crucial determinant of themigration process...

Using a matched firm-worker dataset, we show both theoretically and empirically that positiveassortative matching between firms...

We investigate the effect of forecast uncertainty in a cointegrating vector error correctionmodel for Switzerland. Forecast uncertainty is evaluated in three different dimensions. First,we investigate the effect on forecasting performance of averaging over forecasts fromdifferent models...

This paper considers a multivariate t version of the Gaussian dynamic conditional correlation(DCC) model proposed by Engle (2002), and suggests the use of devolatized returnscomputed as returns standardized by realized volatilities rather than by GARCH type volatilityestimates. The t-DCC...

To assess the employment effects of labor costs it is crucial to have reliable estimates of thelabor cost elasticity of labor demand. Using a matched firm-worker dataset, we estimate along run unconditional labor demand function, exploiting information on workers to correct forendogeneity in the...

This paper considers the implications of the permanent/transitory decomposition of shocksfor identification of structural models in the general case where the model might contain morethan one permanent structural shock. It provides a simple and intuitive generalization of theinfluential work of...