The paper compares the search for structural breaks in Sweden's GDP conducted with X-11 seasonally adjusted data, with seasonally unadjusted data, and with temporally aggregated data. A structural break (in 1980) is found only in the X-11 adjusted data, it is plausible to conclude that this...

To evaluate loan applicants, banks use a large variety of systems. The objective of such credit scoring models typically is to minimize default rates or the number of incorrectly classified loans. Thereby they fail to take into account that loans are multiperiod contracts. From a utility...

This paper has two purposes. The first purpose is methodological and aims to extend previous work on efficiency analysis by implementing a multiple-output stochastic ray frontier production function model. This model generalizes the single-output stochastic frontier model to multiple-input,...

Government debt and redistributive taxation can help people to smooth consumption when facing uninsurable individual specific risk. I examine the effects that variations in public debt and transfers have on risk sharing, efficiency, and the distribution of resources. I find that risk sharing can...

Recent empirical growth literature suggests that cultural factors play a decisive role in economic development, while empirical evidence for their impact on government activity remains scant. In this paper, we conjecture based on Weber’s Protestant Ethics that ‚Protestant values’ such as...

Most standard hypothesis tests have high power only against a limited space of alternative hypotheses. With the advent of new tests for the same hypothesis, claimed to have higher power for some alternatives, but lower for other, the practitioner has to make a choice between alternative tests....

The effect of economic incentives on worker absenteeism is analyzed using panel data on work absence behavior for each day during 1990 and 1991 (i.e. 730 observations in the time dimension) for a representative sample of 1,396 Swedish blue collar workers. During the observed time period, a major...

Using detailed micro data from the Indonesian manufacturing sector, we examine whether participation in international trade affects establishments' productivity. Establishments participating in exports or imports have relatively high levels of productivity. Furthermore, the results suggest that...

It is shown in this study that in the case of vertically differentiated products, Bertrand competition at the retail level does not prevent an incumbent upstream firm from using exclusivity contracts to deter the entry of a more efficient rival, contrary to what happens in the homogenous product...

We study the inflation uncertainty reported by individual forecasters in the Survey of Professional Forecasters 1969-2001. Three popular measures of uncertainty built from survey data are analyzed in the context of models for forecasting and asset pricing, and improved estimation methods are...