We investigate the role of crude oil spot and futures prices in the process of price discovery by using a cost-of-carry model with an endogenous convenience yield and daily data over the period from January 1990 to December 2008. We provide evidence that futures markets play a more important...

Regression analysis using panel data for 42 colleges and universities over 14 years suggests that the economics faculty size of universities offering a Ph.D. in economics is determined primarily by the long-run average number of Ph.D. degrees awarded annually; the number of full-time faculty...

This paper presents a study of backward and forward patent citations in patents granted to firms and institutions in the Netherlands by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The study establishes different patterns of patent citation in recent Dutch patents belonging to...

Using a sample of OECD countries, this paper finds that while fiscal rules succeeded in reducing total government expenditures and budget deficits in the medium term, they significantly affected the composition of government expenditure: the ratio of social transfers to government consumption...

Nationwide health interventions are difficult to evaluate as contemporaneous control groups do not exist and before-after approaches are usually infeasible. We propose an alternative semi-parametric estimator that is based on the assumption that the intervention has no direct effect on the...

In the post-war period, the goods composition of trade in OECD countries has changed considerably. We analyze the evolution of comparative advantage using a detailed trade data set and a new analytical tool: the harmonic (weighted) mass index, which enables us to identify periods of structural...

ARCH modelling framework of Engle (1982) and its GARCH generalization of Bollerslev (1986) gave a huge impetus to econometric model building in the field of financial time series with time-varying variance. The main idea of the models was to describe the most typical features of capital markets...

This paper uses the European Commission's Consumer Survey to assess whether inflation expectations have converged and whether inflation uncertainty has diminished following the introduction of the Euro in Europe. Consumers? responses to the survey suggest that inflation expectations depend more...

Understanding the factors that promote or mitigate new firm birth is crucial to regional economic development efforts, since a high level of new firm creation significantly contributes to regional economic vitality and is a major signal of a dynamic economy. The literature suggest that various...

We estimate educational production functions for seven Eastern European transition countries, using student-level TIMSS data for lower secondary education. The results show substantial effects of student background on educational performance and a much lower impact of resources and the...