This paper analyses the effects of discretionary fiscal policy by presenting new empiricalevidence for Germany within a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) framework. FollowingBlanchard and Perotti (2002), the SVAR model is identified by applying institutionalinformation. We find no...

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has beenachieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distributionof GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures.While in the first year after unification, the two...

In this paper we consider the asymptotic distribution of S -estimators in the nonlinear regression model with long-memory error terms. S - estimators are robust estimates with a high breakdown point and good asymptotic properties in the i.i.d case. They are constructed for linear regression. In...

We investigate the behaviour of S - estimators in the linear regression model, when the error terms are long-memory Gaussian processes. It turns out that under mild regularity conditions S - estimators are still normally distributed with a similar variance - covariance structure as in the i.i.d...

We show that there is strong evidence of long-range dependence in the volatilities of several German stock returns. This will be done by estimating the memory parameter of the absolute returns with classical log-periodogram regression as well as by employing the tapered periodogram. Both...