This paper offers a new method for estimation and forecasting of the volatility of financial time series when the stationarity assumption is violated. Our general, local parametric approach particularly applies to general varying-coefficient parametric models, such as GARCH, whose coefficients...

We analyse the effects of different types and concentration of ownership on performance using a large population of firms in the Czech Republic after mass privatization. Specifications based on first-differences combined with instrumental variables show that the performance effects of different...

<heading format="display" id="h1" implicit="yes" level="1">Abstract</heading> Firm productivity and export decisions are closely related to innovation activity. Innovation may play a more important role in the decision to start exporting, and successful exporting may drive process innovation. This suggests that the causality between innovation and exporting may...

The prevalent, and so far most explored, host defense against brood parasitism is egg discrimination. Not only do the hosts differ markedly in their propensity to reject parasitic eggs but rejecters even vary in their egg rejection times. The focus of the present study was to investigate factors...