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...

The Inflation Targeting in Developing Countries and Its Applicability to the Turkish EconomyEser TutarABSTRACTInflation targeting is a monetary policy regime, characterized by public announcement of official target ranges or quantitative targets for price level increases and by explicit...

This empirical study uses stochastic coefficients econometric modeling to forecast real exchange rate volatility and examine how expected and unexpected volatility affect bilateral trade flows of certain steel products between Canada, Mexico and the United States using monthly data for the...

The Industrial Organization literature investigates the product market decisions of a firm while the corporate finance literature explores the financing decisions of the firm. But the truth is both the financing decisions and the product market decisions are interdependent and should be modeled...

The Nonlinear Behavior of Stock Prices:The Impact of Firm Size, Seasonality, and Trading FrequencyDebra Ann Skaradzinski(ABSTRACT)Statistically significant prediction of stock price changes requires security returns correlation with, or dependence upon, some variable(s) across time. Since a...

A large part of the empirical work on differentiated products markets has focused ondemand estimation and the pricing behavior of firms. These two themes are key inputsin important applications such as the merging of two firms or the introduction of newproducts. The validity of inferences,...

This dissertation consists of three essays on econometric analysis including both parametric and nonparametric econometrics. The first chapter outlines three topics involved and briefly discusses the motivations and methods, as well as some conclusions in each of the following chapters.Both...

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...

This dissertation consists of three chapters on development economics. The first two chapters are in the area of international macroeconomics. The third chapter is in an area that is the intersection of macroeconomics and population economics. The first chapter studies currency substitution in...