The EU experience with youth unemployment has changed over recent years with the launchand re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna process. A dramatic shift has takenplace from the 1990s emphasis on labour market flexibility as a tool to abate youth long termunemployment to the more...

Starting from Professor Kornai´s assertion about the necessity to focus on the long-termperspectives of the transformation process, we analyze in this paper the Lisbon performanceof the countries of the European Union from such a long-term, structural perspective. Wepresent in a simple form the...

This paper investigates the impact of macroeconomic shocks on infant mortality in India andinvestigates likely mechanisms. A recent OECD-dominated literature shows that mortality atmost ages is pro-cyclical but similar analyses for poorer countries are scarce, and bothincome risk and mortality...

We analyze the impact of short-run economic fluctuations on age-specific mortality usingBayesian time series econometrics and contribute to the debate on the procyclicality ofmortality. For the first time, we examine the differing consequences of economic changesfor all individual age classes....

This article provides a comprehensive econometric analysis of factors driving aggregatemortality rates over time. It differs from previous studies in this field by simultaneouslyconsidering an extensive set of macroeconomic, socio-economic and ecological factors asexplanatory variables. Germany...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing …rm’s unit labor cost, wereject the hypothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since wefocus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not …t the predictions of the Ma´ckowiak andWiederholt (2009) version of the...

Financial institutions are faced with the challenge to forecast future credit portfolio losses.It is common practice to focus on portfolio models consisting of a limited set of parameters,such as the probability of default, asset correlation, loss given default or exposure at default.A simple...

The following article develops a simultaneous multi-factor model for defaults and recoveries. Applying this model, risk parameters can be forecast using systematic and idiosyncratic risk fac-tors and their implied correlations. The theoretical framework is accompanied by an empirical analysis in...

A major topic in retail lending is the measurement of the inherent portfolio credit risk. Two importantparameters are default probabilities (PDs) and correlations. Both are considered in theNew Basel Accord. Due to limited empirical evidence on their magnitude, in particular for retailcredit...

We use a dynamic adjustment model and panel methodology to investigatethe determinants of a time- varying optimal capital structure. Because firmsmay temporarily deviate from their optimal capital structure in the presenceof adjustment costs, we also endogenize the adjustment process. In partic...