This paper tests Barro's (1979) tax smoothing model of fiscal policy. The model implies that budget deficits and surpluses are used optimally to minimise the distortionary effects of taxation, given a certain path of spending. The theory has a number of implications both for the statistical time...

We formulate a way to study whether the asymmetry of buyers (in the sense of having different prior probability distributions of valuations) is helpful to the seller in private-value auctions (asked first by Cantillon [2001]). In our proposed formulation, this question corresponds to two...

Testing for cointegration is now widespread in economics. Although the principle is sound, the practice has not always been so. In this note, an attempt is made to reveal flaws in some applied testing procedures. Incomplete nonstationary-null procedures make cointegration seem more likely than...

Contrary to the predictions of the rational expectations hypothesis of the term structure, empirical evidence suggest that the term spread between long and short rates fails to forecast future long term rates although its forecasts of future short term rates are in the correct direction. This...

In 1909 Parker Smith showed that the ratio of seats won by the two major parties in Britain was close to the cube of the ratio of their votes. Taagepera and Shugart argue, wrongly, that a fractal electoral map implies this. In fact their premises imply that the seats’ ratio will be the...

A number of volatility forecasting studies have led to the perception that the ARCH- and Stochastic Volatility-type models provide poor out-of-sample forecasts of volatility. This is primarily based on the use of traditional forecast evaluation criteria concerning the accuracy and the...

A survey of the theory of entrepreneurship from Cantillon to Schumpeter and Knight focussing on the virtual dissapearance of entrepreneurship in economic thought after 1870. Since then the concept has made a comeback in the writings of modern Austrians, such as Hayek and Kirzner. Kirzner's...

We show that in a purely nonstationary Vector Autoregression (VAR), the biases of Maximum Likelihood and Least Squares Estimators are asymptotically proportional to the dimension of the system, even when the equations and regressors are generated independantly of each other. When some stable...

This paper investigates whether excess stock price volatility may be due in part to a failure of the market to form rational expectations. Using data on analysts' expectations of long run earnings growth for individual companies, we report a number of interelated results which lend support to...

In their empirical analysis of Real Business Cycle models for the UK, Holland and Scott (1998) find that they cannot reject the proposition that movements in output are largely determined by 'productivity shocks' which are independent of demand side variables, such as interest rates. In this...