Microcredit programs are of great interest to economists and policymakers because of their potential for reducing poverty, particularly among women. The first chapter mainly investigates the effectiveness aspect of microcredit programs. Using program evaluation methods, we find significant...

Over the last twenty years or so the Dynamic Volatility literature has produced a wealth of univariateand multivariate GARCH type models. While the univariate models have been relativelysuccessful in empirical studies, they suffer from a number ofweaknesses, such as unverifiable...

This dissertation is a collection of three empirical essays on Albania andIran. In December of 1990, the communist system in Albania came to an abruptend. The collapse of communism led to a number of macroeconomic reforms that,among other things, brought dramatic changes in the Albanian labor...

The unit root revolution in time series modeling has created substantial interest in non-stationarity and its implications for empirical modeling. Beyond the original interest in trend vs.di¤erence non-stationarity, there has been renewed interest in testing and modeling structuralbreaks. The...