Technological innovations have contributed over the years to an increasing stock of durable goods -those products that are not immediately consumed but provide a stream of services over a long period of time. Indeed, virtually every household in a modern economy owns a refrigerator, a personal...

Value at Risk (VaR) is a measure of the maximum potential change in value of a portfolio of financial assets with a given probability over a given time horizon. VaR became a key measure of market risk since the Basle Committee stated that banks should be able to cover losses on their trading...

The threat of short-term supply disruptions may matter for commodity prices, although their magnitude is hard to detect, for example, due to anticipation, storage and the relatively short duration of strikes. This article uses a century of labor strikes in Chile copper mines (1910-2010) to...

When confronting credit constraints, female-led or -owned firms may adopt environmental assurances to increase access to credit. However, this depends on how financial institutions integrate gender diversity and environmental risk into the rating phase of their credit management system. This...

This study investigates the effect of firm level political connections on product and process (core) innovations in emerging economies using an instrumental probit model based on World Bank Enterprise Surveys data. We find that formal political connections have a favourable impact on firm level...

Using monthly industrial sector data from January 1971 to March 2004, we test for business cycles convergence among the major APEC members: Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, USA, and Canada. In addition, we examine the synchronization of business cycles among Australia, Japan, and South...

Despite impressive growth in derivatives markets around the world, there is considerable heterogeneity in the degree of development across countries. In Latin America, derivatives markets in Chile lag far behind those in Brazil and Argentina. What accounts for these differences? The analytical...