Abstract The worldwide growth slowdown after 1975 was a major negative fiscal shock; lower growth lowers the present value of tax revenues and primary surpluses and thus makes a given level of debt more burdensome. Most countries failed to adjust to the negative fiscal consequences of the growth...

Summary According to David Hume, the specie flow mechanism allows a stabilisation effect in the case of diverging current account imbalances in a gold standard system. Likewise in EMU, trade deficits and capital flight in GIPS countries generate a transfer of euro reserves into surplus...

Abstract Based on new estimates of public and private capital stocks for 22 OECD countries we study the dynamic effect of public capital on the real gross domestic product using a vector autoregression approach. Whereas most former studies put effort on examining the effects of public capital in...

Purpose – In all existing theoretical papers on causality it is assumed that the lag length is known a priori. However, in applied research the lag length has to be selected before testing for causality. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that in investigating the effectiveness of various...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the extent to which major US airlines respond to one another in quality of service improvements. Design/methodology/approach Utilizing monthly data, the authors estimate a five-equation vector autoregressive model to determine which airline leads...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of macroeconomic factors on secured and unsecured household loans from UK banks. Design/methodology/approach – The approach uses Vector auto‐regression models to test the relationship between macroeconomic factors such as...

Purpose Investors’ fear can be rational, emanating from the natural dynamics of economic fundamentals, or it can be quasi rational and not attributable to any known risk factors. Using VIX from Chicago Board Options Exchange as a proxy for investors’ fear, the purpose of this paper is to...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent hedge funds are subject to irrationality in their investment decisions. The authors advance the hypothesis that irrational behavior affects hedge fund returns despite their sophistication and active management style....

The impact of structural adjustment program on the economic situation in many African countries can not be overemphasised. Over two decades of implementing neo-liberal economic policies by the Bretton Woods institution, it is of great importance to document the lessons learnt. This paper elicits...