Unemployment continues to bedevil Poland, albeit with striking sub-national differences, which this paper seeks to explain using random effects error component two-stage estimation for the country's NUTS 4 level powiats. Given the economy's peculiar configuration under communism, with its large...

There has been concern that the increase in non-standard or flexible employment contracts witnessed in many OECD economies is evidence of a growth in low-pay, low-quality jobs. In practice, however, it is difficult to evaluate the `quality' of flexible jobs. Previous research has either...

We investigate the procedure used by Ané and Geman (2000) to recover the moments of the information flow from high frequency data, in a model which generalizes the subordinated process in Clark (1973). We explain why the third and higher moments of the latent information flow cannot be...

This paper explores the concept of cooperative merger between two of three entrants that arrive sequentially in a spatial market and practise discriminatory pricing. In this framework, in contrast to much of the theoretical literature, the so-called 'merger paradox' can be comprehensively...

This paper deals with the nonlinear modeling and forecasting of the dollar-sterling real exchange rate using a long span of data. Our contribution is threefold. First, we provide significant evidence of smooth transition dynamics in the series by employing a battery of recently developed...

The specification of Smooth Transition Regression models consists of a sequence of tests, which are typically based on the assumption of i.i.d. errors. In this paper we examine the impact of conditional heteroskedasticity and investigate the performance of several heteroskedasticity robust...

Recent research by Gu and Wu (2003) and Basu and Markov (2004) suggests that the well-known optimism bias in analysts' earnings forecasts is attributable to analysts minimizing symmetric, linear loss functions when the distribution of forecast errors is skewed. An alternative explanation for...

Informal job search methods could alleviate short-term labour market difficulties of displaced workers by providing information on job opportu- nities, allowing them to signal their productivity and may mitigate wage losses through better post-displacement job matching. However if dis- placement...

In the context of a standard model of optimal monetary policy, I argue that expectations should be treated as adaptive rather than rational. This argument is justified by considering the rational expectations equilibrium of this model as the limit point of a sequence in which agents...

Macroeconomic forecasts are used extensively in industry and government The historical accuracy of US and UK forecasts are examined in the light of different approaches to evaluating macro forecasts. Issues discussed include the comparative accuracy of macroeconometric models compared to their...