Important gaps remain in the understanding of the economic consequences of civil war.  Focusing on the conflict in Rwanda in the early 90s, and using micro data to carry out econometric analysis, this paper finds that households and localities that experience more intense conflict are lagging...

The article aims to present and discuss estimates of levels of human and social capital in Italy's regions over the long term, i.e. roughly from the second half of the nineteenth century up to the present day.  The results are linked to newly available evidence for regional value added in order...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the choice between adopting a monetary base or an interest rate setting instrument to maintain financial stability.  Our results suggest that the interest rate instrument is preferable, since during times of a panic or financial crisis the Central Bank...

This paper looks at some recent work on estimating quadratic variation using realised variance (RV) - that is sums of M squared returns. This econometrics has been motivated by the advent of the common availability of high frequency financial return data. When the underlying process is a...

In this paper we study the reliability of the mixed normal asymptotic distribution of realised variance error, which we have previously derived using the theory of realised power variation. Our experiments suggest that the asymptotics is reliable when we work with the logarithmic transform of...

This paper provides limit distribution results for power variation, that is sums of powers of absolute increments, for certain types of time-changed Brownian motion and $alpha $-stable processes. Special cases of these processes are stochastic volatility models used extensively in financial...

A positive correlation between relative position and the neurotransmitter serotonin exists in non-human primates, within an optimal range. This paper explores the reasons of this correlation. The main function of serotonin appears cognitive: it determines how optimally agents perceive and behave...

This paper shows that realised power variation and its extension we introduce here called realised bipower variation is somewhat robust to rare jumps. We show realised bipower variation estimates integrated variance in SV models --- thus providing a model free and consistent alternative to...

The appropriate stance of monetary policy during speculative attacks has been the source of much controversy. According to the `traditional view`, a tighter monetary policy is necessary to discourage the outflow of capital, and thus prevent the exchange rate from depreciating. The `revisionist...

In order to assess the effect of jumps on realised variance calculations, we study some of the econometric properties of time-changed Levy processes. We show that in general we can derive the second order properties of realised variances and use these to estimate the parameters of such models....