Options should play an important role in asset allocation. They allow for kernel spanning and provide access to additional (priced) risk factors such as stochastic volatility and negative jumps. Unfortunately, traditional methods of asset allocation (e.g. mean-variance optimization) are not...

In the sequence of the recent financial and economic crisis, the level of government indebtedness has increased considerably in many European and Monetary Union (EMU) countries. Besides i) undermine the sustainability of public finances and ii) amplify steady-state distortions relative to the...

The objective of the current paper is to estimate the aggregate, country-level production function as a relationship between countries' aggregate inputs and their maximum attainable output, computed on the basis of the World Technology Frontier -- the best-practice frontier at each moment in...

One of the characteristics of the Spanish economy is the high percentage of small and medium-sized firms. Size is one of the factors that condition the managerial organization of the firm and their efficiency and productivity. On the other hand, it is a well-established connection between...

The aim of this paper is to carry out a sectorial causality analysis between prices and unit labour costs for the Spanish regions. In order to achieve our goal, we have developed our own database for the unit labour costs (ULC). It includes data for Spain and five of its regions: Andalusia,...

Ireland is (together with Greece and Portugal) a euro-zone country, which is receiving financial assistance. It is conditional on acceptance of recommendations of common experts groups of European commission, European central bank and International monetary fund. Macroeconomic stabilization...

The puzzle of Feldstein and Horioka (1980) stems from the early eighties: the authors identified the correlation between a country's savings-to-GDP and investment-to-GDP ratio as a measure of international capital mobility. By using a cross-section analysis they concluded that the long-awaited...

The Austrian agricultural sector is very heterogeneous in natural conditions and farming systems and highly vulnerable to climate change (e.g. alpine farming). The economic assessment of climate change impacts on and adaptation measures for agriculture requires an integrated modeling approach to...

This study aims to evaluate the results of a test of the access to interviews of young men of French and North African origin in order to highlight the possible existence and extent of discriminatory practices against persons of foreign origin (North African). We innovate by the fact that we...

Policy analysis with a dynamic CGE model requires a baseline solution that is a plausible forecast of the whole set of model's variables. An important issue in the development of the baseline forecast is to account for structural change. This is aided by the technique of historical simulations...