We analyse output risk in Italian agriculture over the period 1870- 1914. We use data on a set of 16 tenanted plots grouped into three farms comprising a single large estate. We estimate the degree of risk associated with each separate crop, with the portfolio of crops at the level of the plot,...

In the standard independent private values (IPV)model, each bidder’s beliefs about the values of any other bidder is represented by a unique prior. In this paper we relax this assumption and study the question of auction design in an IPV setting characterized by ambiguity: bidders have an...

We provide a novel empirical analysis of the South Korean economy that reveals large volumes of excess or 'unproductive' credit since the late 1970s, indicating that a sizeable proportion of total credit was used to refinance unprofitable projects. Our findings are consistent with the hypotheses...

The belief that both the behavior and outcomes of students are affected by their peers is important in shaping education policy. I analyze two polar education systems -tracking and mixing- and propose several criteria for their comparison. I find that tracking is the system that maximizes...

This paper proposes a Baysian approach to explore money-output causality within a logistic smooth transition VECM framework. Our empirical results provide substantial evidence that the postwar US money-output relationship is nonlinear, with regime changes mainly governed by the lagged inflation...

The available minimum wage literature, which is mostly based on US evidence, is not very useful for analyzing developing countries, where the minimum wage affects many more workers and labor institutions and law enforcement differ in important ways. The main contribution of this paper is to...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, by focusing on Single Equation and VECM techniques commonly employed to test for the Expectations Hypothesis of the Term Structure of interest rates (EHTS), it sheds light on the conditions - in terms of the different classes of stochastic processes...

We study a market where two universities, a public and a private one, compete for students by setting admission standards. Students differ in ability and receive a wage premium for participating in higher education. This wage increases with the quality of the university attended. The private...

The paper provides new insights into the role of financial liberalization in the South Korean financial crisis using a number of novel approaches. Firstly, primary information regarding the relaxation of financial restraints, such as interest rate ceilings, capital controls and reserve...