We hypothesise that, given the typically uneven distribution of ethnic groups within acountry, ethnic diversity leads to greater local polarization and more frequent, butsmaller, conflicts that involve only some ethnic groups. These conflicts can beoverlooked if the number of fatalities is...

Employing a large individual-level administrative dataset from Great Britain, coveringthe period 1999-2005, we analyse the factors inuencing the length of unemployment benetsclaimant periods with subsequent transition to re-employment. To this end, this individual-level data is merged with a...

For the evaluation of policy reforms numerous governments use, among other sources,administrative social security data. Although this data is large and contains detailed in-formation about policy measures, it inherits several limitations due to the administrativeprocess of generating data. This...

Many popular estimators for duration models require independent competing risks orindependent censoring. In contrast, copula based estimators are also consistent in presence ofdependent competing risks. In this paper we suggest a computationally convenient extensionof the Copula Graphic...

The paper proves that in two-player logit form symmetric contestswith concave success function, commitment to a particular strategydoes not increase a player's payo, while in contests with more thantwo players it does. The paper also provides a contest-like game inwhich commitment does not...

In a successive Cournot oligopoly, we show the welfare effects of entry inthe final goods market with no scale economies but with cost difference between thefirms. If the input market is very concentrated, entry in the final goods market alwaysincreases welfare. If the input market is moderately...

Can pegging reduce real as well as nominal, and multilateral as well as bilateralexchange rate volatility? We investigate this issue using monthly data for 139countries from January 1990 to June 2006...

Empirical evidence from the UK market is brought to bear on recent theories of closed-endfund discounts. Market pricing of skill, relative to the fees charged for it, accounts for asignificant portion of discount variation, but cannot explain the rarity of index funds orwhy they trade at a...

Real effective exchange rate volatility is examined for 90 countries using monthlydata from January 1990 to June 2006. Volatility decreases with openness tointernational trade and per capita GDP, and increases with inflation, particularlyunder a horizontal peg or band, and with terms-of-trade...

The fact that members of an immigrant community may have different demographiccharacteristics, or may have different tastes, to the indigenous population, may manifestitself in differences in saving behaviour. In addition, depending on their ethnicbackground, there could be differences among the...