The 35-h workweek regulation, fully adopted in France in 2000, has been one of the most significant regulatory shocks imposed on any large economy. Yet the effects of the regulation remain controversial. In this paper, we evaluate the effects of the 35-h workweek regulation on unemployment and...

Air-source heat pump (ASHP) often operates with substantial frost formation on the outdoor heat exchanger at low ambient temperature in winter, it insulates the finned surface and also reduces heat transfer rate, leading to performance degradation or even shutdown of ASHP systems. Although...

In the present paper, we build a bivariate semiparametric dynamic panel model to repro-duce the joint dynamics of sovereign ratings and government bond yields. While the individual equations resemble Pesaran-type cointegration models, we allow for different long-run relationships in both...

This paper analyses the interdependency between political corruption, institutions and growth. The central thesis is that a high level of income will promote corruption in the short run, due to the incentive effect of income on potentially corrupt politicians. Only in the long run income is...

Based on case studies from countries that have been hit hardest by the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the present paper shows that the accusation that sovereign ratings led to a severe acceleration of the crisis is unconvincing and that the empirical method often used to support accusations...

The aim of this paper is to examine whether Chairman Greenspan influenced the Reserve Bank Presidents. This question is interesting, because it has been argued that their preferences would be more persistent compared to those of the Governors. We estimate individual Taylor-type reaction...

Waren die Peripherieländer im Euroraum am Vorabend der Eurokrise nicht mehr wettbewerbsfähig? Oder war die preisliche Wettbewerbsfähigkeit in den Kernländern wie Deutschland ungewöhnlich hoch? Antworten auf diese Fragen sind nicht einfach. Das gängige Maß für die preisliche...

Due to the recent financial crisis, the interest in econometric models that allow to incorporate binary variables (such as the occurrence of a crisis) experienced a huge surge. This paper evaluates the performance of the Qual VAR, i.e. a VAR model including a latent variable that governs the...