This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'International Small Business Journal' (2013). Volume 31, issue 1, pages 23-33.<P> Education is argued to be an important driver of the decision to start a business. The measurement of its influence, however, is difficult since it is considered...</p>

The paper empirically analyzes stock market integration and the benefit possibilities of international portfolio diversification across the Southeast Asia (ASEAN) and U.S. equity markets. It employs daily sample of 6 ASEAN equity market indices and S&P 500 index as a proxy of U.S. market index...

We develop a model of household demand for frequently purchased consumer goods that are branded, storable and subject to stochastic price fluctuations. Our framework accounts for how inventories and expectations of future prices affect current period purchase decisions. We estimate our model...

In response to a request from the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, we propose a model to estimate default probabilities for bonds issued by cities. The model can be used with financial data available in Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports that cities are required to...

We provide a practical method to estimate the payoff functions of players in complete information, static, discrete games. With respect to the empirical literature on entry games originated by Bresnahan and Reiss (1990) and Berry (1992), the main novelty of our framework is to allow for general...

"Despite the ongoing discussion on labor shortage in the German economy there is still a lack of empirical analyses of this problem based on adequate econometric methods. The paper explores the determinants of labor shortage in the environmental sector supplying products and services that help...

We propose a data-constrained generalized maximum entropy estimator for discrete sequential move games of perfect information. Unlike most other work on the estimation of complete information games, the method we proposed is data constrained and requires o simulation or assumptions about the...

Many households in developing countries often have difficulty in smoothing consumption through formal credit channels. In turn, many rely on social (informal) networks. While this topic has been explored extensively in the literature on rural areas, the urban scene remains largely...

This study examines the role of intergenerational family ties on the female labor market participation in Turkey. The data used in this study are obtained from the Household Labour Force Survey, conducted by Turkish Statistical Institute in the first period of 2003. Recursive bivariate probit...

The paper focuses on a comparative analysis of people’s attitudes towards immigrants’ role in several aspects of countries’ life depending on individual’s socio-demographic and economic characteristics in Estonia and Russia. The empirical part of the paper relies on the European Social...