Over the last four decades, several methods for selecting the smoothing parameter, generally called the bandwidth, have been introduced in kernel regression. They differ quite a bit, and although there already exist more selection methods than for any other regression smoother we can still see...

The general objective of this dissertation is to understand the relationship between economic growth, government expenditure in public services and infrastructure on different sectors of the population. Through three essays this dissertation pursues the objective by explicitly highlighting the...

The three essays of this dissertation contribute to the measurement of European economic integration and investigate the welfare effects of the European countries. The first study presents a newly developed index – the EU Index – which measures the extent of economic integration into the...

This paper reviews and summarizes the literature that has concentrated on budget consolidations and their fiscal and economic effects. The issue of fiscal adjustments has again gained importance due to the recent economic crisis and the resulting fiscal imbalances. The existing literature shows...