Abstract In the 1980s, fifty years after the Great Depression industrial countries came again to be haunted with the spectre of mass unemployment. The unemployment situation, into the 1990s, continues to be dire in several European Union countries. Double digit unemployment rates are currently...

Abstract This paper was originally written as a background document for the ILO's input to the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) held at Istanbul, 3-14th June 1996. In recognition of the active role of the ILO in preparation for Habitat II, the Habitat...

A main purpose of my contribution is to provide a constructive critique of the present organisation of European economies under liberalisation and globalisation. Contrary to the exaggerated claims in leading economic circles about the virtues of this economic regime, its actual record has been...

Abstract This short paper aims to contribute to the debate on the causes and remedies for high rates of unemployment and under-employment, which presently afflict large parts of both the North (industrial countries) and the South (developing countries).

Using daily data from March 2001 to June 2005, we estimate a VAR-BEKK model and find evidence of return and volatility spillovers between the German, the Dutch and the British forward electricity markets. We apply Hafner and Herwartz [2006, Journal of International Money and Finance 25, 719-740]...

Forecasting the density of returns is useful for many purposes in finance, such as risk manage- ment activities, portfolio choice or derivative security pricing. Existing methods to forecast the den- sity of returns either use prices of the asset of interest or option prices on this same asset....

In this paper, we first provide empirical evidence of the existence of intraday jumps in the crude oil price series. We then show that these jumps, in conjunction with realized volatility measures, are important in modeling the convenience yield over the 2001-2010 period. Our empirical results...

Abstract It is argued here that – contrary to current conventional wisdom – an active market for corporate control is not an essential ingredient of either company law reform or financial and economic development. The absence of such a market in coordinated market systems during their modern...

This paper addresses the question of whether growth convergence can be sustained in the global economy without compromising welfare and without causing major crises. It employs a simplified stock-flow analytical framework to examine the proposition that the pace and pattern of global growth is...

The recent implementation of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in January 2005 created new financial risks for emitting firms. To deal with these risks, options are traded since October 2006. Because the EU ETS is a new market, the relevant underlying model for option pricing is still a...