We propose a simple measure of beta-convergence which is not subject to Galton's fallacy. We illustrate our measure with OECD data for the period 1950-1988. We find evidence of sigma-convergence but little or no indication of beta-convergence over the period.

This paper investigates the factors that determine job-to-job mobility in Ireland over the period 1995 to 2001. It finds that labour market experience, working in the public sector, human capital, whether a person is overskilled and the sector they work in are important determinants of job...

In the last few years there has been many comments made in the media about the Irish housing market boom. This paper focuses on two of these comments. The first comment is that some economists have suggested that a speculative bubble might be present in Irish house prices. The second comment is...

We simulate the performances of a standard derivatives portfolio to evaluate the relevance of benchmarking in terms of downside risk reduction. The simulation shows that benchmarking always leads to significantly more severe losses in average than those generated by letting the portfolio reach...

Placing limits on the movement of economic fundamentals in order to maintain an exchange rate within a target zone also puts a target zone around interest rate differentials. The bandwidth of exchange rate and interest rate differentials target zones will be different except at one point; it is...

This paper analyses the stabilising properties of an exchange rate target zone when the stock of available reserves is limited. In these circumstances it is reasonable to suppose that the optimal bandwidth is affected by the expected lifetime of the zone. Our analysis uses Sutherland's (1995)...

Using data on approximately 1240 games of bowling we examine the statistical properties of 10-pin bowling scores. We find evidence that that the distribution of bowling scores is approximately log-normally distributed with a common variance across players. This allows us to consider the...

This paper examines student incentives when faced with a college admissions policy which pursues student body diversity. The effect of a diversify-conscious admissions policy critically depends on the design of the policy. If the admissions policy fails to incentivize students from a...

The misevaluation of risk in securitized …financial products is central to understand- ing the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. This paper characterizes the evolution of factors affecting collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) based on subprime mortgages. A key feature of subprime-mortgage backed...