Using data from Germany, Japan, UK, and the U.S., we explore possible threshold cointegration in nominal short- and long-run interest rates with corresponding inflation rates. Traditional cointegration implies perfect mean reversion in real rates and hence confirms the Fisher hypothesis....

This paper questions traditional approaches for testing the day-of-the-week effect on stock returns. We propose an alternative approach based on the closure test principle introduced by Marcus, Peritz and Gabriel (1976), which has become very popular in Biometrics and Medical Statistics. We test...

Recent attention has focused on the UK's productivity gap in the retail sector. Figure 1 shows an estimate of labour productivity in retail across countries, using output per hour worked. The UK lies well behind the US, France and Germany. Reynolds at al (2005) contribute to this debate by...

The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labour market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of...

Motivated by economic-theory concepts - the Fisher hypothesis and the theory of the term structure - we consider a small set of simple bivariate closed-loop time-series models for the prediction of price inflation and of long- and short-term interest rates. The set includes vector...

The expansion of Western European production accelerated in the first half of 1997. Exports were the main engine, driven by a devaluation of European currencies and strong growth abroad. Domestic demand also picked up somewhat led by investment in machinery and equipment. Inflation remained at...

Over the course of the past twenty years, venture capital has fuelled an entrepreneurial revolution - first in the United States and now in Europe's common market -, which has opened new opportunities for technological innovation, capital investment and employment growth. Some of the most...

This study explores a new modelling approach that bridges the gap between multilateral country-level data and the bilateral-model based, goods-market specific purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis. Under this approach, PPP is embedded in latent common factors, extractable from a large set of...

In this study of Ghana integrated to the world economy, we focus primarily on Ghana-UK-Germany trade axis partly because of Ghana's relative dependence on the EU for her international trade. The study employs „representative“ country macroeconometric models of these economies, using data...

Research efforts towards new energy sources and towards the efficiency of energy use will be vital to reducing CO2 abatement costs in the long term. Can such efforts be induced by price instruments? Economists often cite induced technological change as a possible consequence of environmental...