This paper re-examines the instrumental variable (IV) approach to estimating returns to education by use of compulsory school law (CSL) in the US. We show that the IV-approach amounts to a change in model specification by changing the causal status of the variable of interest. From this...

In the context of the recent slump in global oil prices, the paper investigates the effect of oil price shocks on the economic performance of 51 individual OECD and OPEC economies. We propose an error correction model which allows us to differentiate between short- and longrun price effects. For...

Aggregate financial conditions indices (FCIs) are constructed to fulfil two aims: (i) The FCIs should resemble non-model-based composite indices in that their composition is adequately invariant for concatenation during regular updates; (ii) the concatenated FCIs should outperform financial...

The functioning of commodity markets has changed related to processes of financialization that involve two major developments - the rise of financial interest on commodity derivative markets through the increasing presence of financial investors and the changing business models of international...