We apply a recently proposed method to disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from risk in returns to education to data for the USA, the UK and Germany. We find that in residual wage variation, uncertainty by far dominates unobserved heterogeneity. The relation between uncertainty and level of...

(english) This paper studies the determinants of poverty dynamics in several rural areas from Madagascar. A particular attention is devoted to testing if rural poverty persistence in Madagascar could be explained by a vicious circle leading to a poverty trap. Annual poverty transitions retrieved...

This study analyzes the trade flows of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) both among its member countries and with the rest of the world for the 1997-2002 and 2003-2007 periods. In this paper, the research question is whether the trade flows of the GCC countries with their partners have...

This study analyzes the trade flows of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) both among its member countries and with the rest of the world for the 1997-2002 and 2003-2007 periods. In this paper, the research question is whether the trade flows of the GCC countries with their partners have...

We apply a recently proposed method to disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from risk in returns to education. We replicate the original study on US men and extend to US women, UK men and German men. Most original results are not robust. A college education cannot universally be considered an...

This paper studies the determinants of poverty dynamics in several rural areas from Madagascar. A particular attention is devoted to testing if rural poverty persistence in Madagascar could be explained by a vicious circle leading to a poverty trap. Annual poverty transitions retrieved from an...

We study the estimation of a high dimensional approximate factor model in the presence of both cross sectional dependence and heteroskedasticity. The classical method of principal components analysis (PCA) does not efficiently estimate the factor loadings or common factors because it essentially...

The term now-casting is a contraction for now and forecasting and has been used for a long-time in meteorology and recently also in economics In this paper we survey recent developments on economic now-casting with special focus on those models that formalize key features of how market...

The increasing attention given to global energy issues and the international policies needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have given a renewed stimulus to research interest in the linkages between the energy sector and economic performance at country level. In this paper, we analyse the...

This paper enriches existing valuation literature in a number of ways by presenting context-specific estimates of immaterial damage. First, it offers an estimation of value of statistical life (VOSL) in the context of a natural hazard (flooding). Next, as one of the contributions, alongside with...