We propose a fast approximate Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for large data sets embedded in a design based approach. Here, the loglikelihood ratios involved in the Metropolis-Hastings acceptance step are considered as data. The building block is one single subsample from the complete data set,...

While the actions of economists and politicians can be influenced by facts, statistics or empirical predictions, narratives are becoming an increasingly important factor for the decision making in the field of economics and politics. Evaluating such narratives not at selective points in time but...

Identifying narratives in texts is a challenging task, as not only narrative elements such as the factors and events have to be identified but their semantic relation has to be explained as well. Despite this complexity, an effective technique to extract narratives from texts can have a great...

The prompt availability of information on the current state of the economy in real-time is required for prediction purposes and crucial for timely policy adjustment and economic decision-making. While important macroeconomic indicators are reported only quarterly and also published with...

Regional banks as savings and cooperative banks are widespread in continental Europe. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, however, they had problems keeping their profitability which is an important quantitative indicator for the health of a bank and the banking sector overall. We use a...

Risk preferences are typically assumed to be constant for an individual across the life cycle. In this paper we empirically assess if they are time varying. Specifically, we analyse whether health shocks influence individual risk aversion. We follow an innovative approach and use grip strength...

With the ‘Sustainable Energy for All’ initiative led by the UN and World Bank, the provision of access to modern energy has recently been brought to the top of the international development agenda. However, there is yet little guidance on how to measure modern energy access or its...

The spell-based nature of the National Educational Panel Study poses some challenges for analyzing training participation rates across waves. Raw training participation rates of each wave using courses compiled in the SpCourses data set and in the SpEmp data set differ by up to 75 percent across...

This paper develops a decomposition algorithm by which a market economy with many households may be solved through the computation of equilibria for a sequence of representative agent economies. The paper examines local and global convergence properties of the sequential recalibration (SR)...

In recent years, the international community has expanded efforts in programme evaluation to improve the accountability of development projects. This paper presents approaches to implementing state-of-the-art evaluations in rural electrification projects, taking into account specific challenges...