A five cent $0.05 investment in Bitcoin on July 17, 2010, the first date in which there appears to have been a published value had grown to $7,383.39 on July 18, 2018. While Bitcoin as a currency has existed for less than a decade ̶ it had a very limited liquidity and usage during the first few...

Bordo and Helbing (2003) examine the business cycle in Western economies over the 1881-2001 period. They examine four distinct periods in economic history and conclude that there is a secular trend towards greater synchronisation for much of the 20th century, and that it takes place across these...

The aim of this paper is to show that random matrix theory (RMT) can be a useful addition to the economist?s tool-kit in the analysis of macro-economic time series data. A great deal of applied economic work relies upon empirical estimates of the correlation matrix. However due to the finite...

Die Bedeutung von Kohle wird heute oft unterschätzt, da sie lange als eine Ressource der Vergangenheit galt. Dabei ist Kohle nach wie vor Grundpfeiler der Stromerzeugung in den meisten Ländern: Ein Viertel des weltweiten Primärenergieverbrauchs wird durch Kohle gedeckt. Während die größten...

With its resource availability and the prospect of climate friendly technology, coal continues to play an important role in the global energy sector. We develop a complementarity model of the international market for steam coal. We want to analyze the level of competition in this market which is...

Before 2004 South Africa was the dominant steam coal exporter to the European market. However a new market situation with rising global demand and prices makes room for a new entrant: Russia. The hypothesis investigated in this paper is that the three incumbent dominant firms located in South...

This paper suggests spatial models as an alternative to the Armington approach to model bilateral trade. While the use of spatial models has been accepted for decades, they are rarely chosen for such analyses. However, problems inherent in the application of the Armington approach can be...