Total Factor Productivity (TFP) accounts for a sizeable proportion of the income and growth differences across countries. Two challenges remain to researchers aiming to explain these differences: on the one hand, TFP growth is hard to measure; on the other hand, model uncertainty hampers...

In this paper we argue that modelling the cross-country distribution of per capita income as a mixture distribution provides a natural framework for the detection of convergence clubs. The framework yields tests for the number of component distributions that are likely to have more power than...

In endogenous growth theory models exist which are characterized by local and global indeterminacy. These concepts imply that economies differ with respect to their growth rates on the transition path (local indeterminacy) as well as their long-run growth rates (global indeterminacy). While the...

Convergence of a sequence of bivariate Archimedean copulas to another Archimedean copula or to the comonotone copula is shown to be equivalent with convergence of the corresponding sequence of Kendall distribution functions. No extra differentiability conditions on the generators are needed

Accurate future mortality forecasts are of fundamental importance as they ensure adequate pricing of mortality-linked insurance and financial products. Extrapolative methods are the most commonly adopted forecasting approach in the literature on projecting future mortality rates (see for example...

This appendix extends simulation and empirical results reported in Mancini and Trojani (2010). It discusses the choice of the robustness tuning constants; describes the unconditional, independence and conditional coverage tests for VaR forecast evaluation; provides additional Monte Carlo...

The elasticity of substitution between domestic and imported goods is a central parameter in macroeconomic models, but after decades of empirical studies there is no consensus on its magnitude. Earlier literature using time series arrives at low values, while more recent studies using...

This paper investigates the predictability of asset prices among developed and emerging markets. Weekly and monthly stock market indices from developed and emerging market economies are analysed to check the validity of weak-form of Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) using various empirical...