We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We disentangle between tfp and technology adoption, while available studies so far have considered only a notion of productivity con ating the two effects. To this aim, we estimate...

We propose a new method for estimating the covariance matrix of a multivariate time series of nancial returns. The method is based on estimating sample covariances from overlapping windows of observations which are then appropriately weighted to obtain the nal covariance estimate. We extend the...

The time-series dynamics of short-term interest rates are important as they are a key input into pricing models of the term structure of interest rates. In this paper we extend popular discrete time short-rate models to include Markov switching of infinite dimension. This is a Bayesian...

We examine the causal relationship between crude oil and gold spot prices before and after the recent financial crisis. In the pre-crisis period, causality is linear and unidirectional, running from oil to gold. In the post-crisis period, a bidirectional nonlinear causality relationship emerges....

It is sometimes alleged that collective bargaining coverage in Germany is understated because uncovered firms ‘orient’ themselves toward sectoral agreements. In fact, although orientation has grown as sectoral bargaining has declined, their joint frequency has fallen. Further, where...

More than low default rates, lenders are interested in the expected return on their loans. In this paper, we consider a number of other measures of repayment and nonpayment that are likely to be of direct interest to lenders. Using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, we...

This paper deals with models allowing for trending processes and cyclical component with error processes that are possibly nonstationary, nonlinear, and non-Gaussian. Asymptotic confidence intervals for the trend, cyclical component, and memory parameters are obtained. The confidence intervals...

Least squares cross-validation (CV) methods are often used for automated bandwidth selection. We show that they share a common structure which has an explicit asymptotic solution that we derive. Using the framework of density estimation, we consider unbiased, biased, and smoothed CV methods. We...

This paper introduces a new method for estimating large variance matrices. Starting from the orthogonal decomposition of the sample variance matrix, we exploit the fact that orthogonal matrices are never ill-conditioned and therefore focus on improving the estimation of the eigenvalues. We...

The issue of digital piracy is a hot button among governments around the world. Piracy rates may significantly affect both internal and international trade of cultural goods. This paper aims to empirically assess the effect of digital piracy on bilateral trade in cultural goods. We focus on...