By using a sample of 77 countries the analysis applies several nonparametric techniques in order to reveal the link between national culture and corruption. Based on Hofstede΄s cultural dimensions and the corruption perception index, the results reveal that countries with higher levels of...

Technical and Allocative efficiency are relative concepts, first it is used conventionally, to know if a producer obtain the maximum level of production, according to the amount of inputs used in the process. The second looks for to know if the producer uses the optimal amounts of inputs in the...

We propose a stable non-parametric algorithm for the calibration of pricing models for portfolio credit derivatives: given a set of observations of market spreads for CDO tranches, we construct a risk-neutral default intensity process for the portfolio underlying the CDO which matches these...

In this paper we explore the relation between vertical disintegration and the co-localization of knowledge intensive business service (Kibs) in the metropolitan region of Milan, using micro-geographic data and nonparametric methods. Our main results are that: (i) compared to other manufacturing...

Mark-ups are often assumed to be constant for all firms within a sector in theoretical models. This paper reflects empirically on the distributions of companies mark-ups in order to test this assumption. We use exhaustive, Finnish company level micro-data to calculate the mark-up for each firm....

Economic and social welfare is inherently multidimensional. However, choosing a measure which combines several indicators is difficult and may have unintendend and undesirable effects on the incentives of policy makers. We develop a nonparametric empirical method for deriving welfare rankings...

In this paper we document and account for the non-normality of returns exhibited by the indices in our samples. Consequently we re-examine the relationship between volatility and volume while distinguishing between returns within a trading day and returns across trading days. Our results...

Studies have found evidence that seemingly irrelevant details of an income component such as its label have an effect on how it is used. Using a data set with more than one million employee-month observations, we investigate the role of functional form assumptions and time aggregation in the...

We provide a signal modality analysis to characterize and detect nonlinearity schemes in the US Industrial Production Index time series. The analysis is achieved by using the recently proposed 'delay vector variance ' (DVV) method, which examines local predictability of a signal in the phase...

In this paper we conduct an analysis of the implementation of HACCP/RMP in the NZ Meat Industry based on the data collected from our recent survey. Nonparametric methods are used to measure the association between plant characteristics such as size, age, activities, and food safety management...