1971-2009. Financial shocks are defined as unexpected changes of a financial conditions index (FCI), recently developed by Hatzius et al. (2010), for the US. We use a time-varying factor-augmented VAR to model the FCI jointly with a large set of macroeconomic, financial and trade variables for...

In certain circumstances, both researchers and policy makers are faced with the challenge of determining individual efficiency scores for each decision making unit (DMU) under consideration. In this study, we use a Monte Carlo experimentation to analyze the optimal approach to determining...

A non-stationary regression model for financial returns is examined theoretically in this paper. Volatility dynamics are modelled both exogenously and deterministic, captured by a nonparametric curve estimation on equidistant centered returns. We prove consistency and asymptotic normality of a...

The paper deals with the social and economic dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation in Italy. The ultimate aim of the paper is to provide policy makers and experts with a conceptual framework, as well as methodological and operational tools for dealing with climate change impacts...

This paper, investigates the effect war and terrorism, have on the covariance between oil prices and the indices of four major stock markets - the American S&P500 and the European DAX, CAC40 and FTSE100 - using nonlinear BEKK-GARCH type models. Findings reported herein indicate that the...

The theory suggests that investment activities and monetary policy influence the development of the global business cycle. The oil price and other raw material prices also play a key role in the economic development and there is a comovement among oil consumption and global output. Therefore,...

The linear-quadratic (LQ) optimization is a close to standard technique in the optimal control framework. LQ is very well researched and there are many extensions for more sophisticated scenarios like nonlinear models. Usually, the quadratic objective function is taken as a prerequisite for...

This paper examines the effects of monetary policy shocks on UK regional economic growth and dispersion in a novel Constrained Mixed Frequency Vector Autoregressive framework. Compared to a standard MFVAR, the model partially accounts for missing quarterly observations for regional growth by...

A key concern in the design of education policies relates to the structure of incentives in accountability systems. This paper examines a school accountability program that provides financial support to low-performing schools but has no direct punishment scheme for recipients who do not exhibit...

The increasing utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) is a major energy policy strategy in many countries worldwide. Germany is a forerunner in the deployment of RES and has ambitious goals for the future. The support and use of renewables affects the economy: It creates business...