Using historical data, we test the validity of Wagner's law of increasing state activity at different stages of economic development for five industrialized European countries: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Italy. In order to investigate the coherence between Wagner's law and...

It has long been recognized that there is considerable heterogeneity in individual risk taking behavior but little is known about the distribution of risk taking types. We present a parsimonious characterization of risk taking behavior by estimating a finite mixture regression model for three...

This paper uses a new approach to determine the fraction of truly skilled managers among the universe of U.S. domestic-equity mutual funds over the 1975 to 2006 period. We develop a simple technique that properly accounts for “false discoveries,” or mutual funds which exhibit significant...

A new test is proposed for the null of absence of serial correlation. The test uses a data-driven smoothing parameter. The resulting test statistic has a standard limit distribution under the null. The smoothing parameter is calibrated to achieve rate-optimality against several classes of...

An attractive feature of panel unit root tests is the ability to exploit coefficient homogeneity under the null hypothesis of a unit root for all series in order to obtain a more powerful test of the unit root hypothesis. However, under the alternative hypothesis of heterogeneous panel unit root...

Panel datasets have been increasingly used in economics to analyse complex economic phenomena. One of the attractions of panel datasets is the ability to use an extended dataset to obtain information about parameters of interest which are assumed to have common values across panel units....

We consider an alternative use of simulation in the context of using the Likelihood-Ratio statistic to test non-nested models. To date simulation has been used to estimate the Kullback-Leibler measure of closeness between two densities, which in turn 'mean adjusts' the Likelihood-Ratio...

Interpreting Granger causality as economic causality implies that the underlying VAR model is a structural economic model. However, this is wrong if simultaneity occurs. Magnitude and stability of possible errors are analysed in a simulation study. It is shown that economic misinterpretations of...

This paper studies tests of calendar effects in equity returns. It is necessary to control for all possible calendar effects to avoid spurious results. The authors contribute to the calendar effects literature and its significance with a test for calendar-specific anomalies that conditions on...