This paper examines the link between parents occupational attainment and that of their children. The existence of such a link implies dependence on inherited conditions and the stronger the link the less the potential for intergenerational mobility. The degree to which occupational mobility is...

This paper examines the relationship between advertising expenditures, sales and the cost of advertising using annual UK data over the period 1967-1997. Strong evidence is found for the existence of a cointegrating relationship between real advertising expenditures, sales volumes, goods prices...

Electricite de France, the French monopoly provider of electricity, has been testing a number of new policy instruments to avoid disconnection among its low income customers. This paper uses decentralization, a common feature of social programmes, to identify the impact of Electricite de...

This paper examines the relationship between universities which house law schools and appropriations per student. Specifically, it is hypothesized that universities with law schools will have higher state appropriations, other things the same, because these universities are likely to have more...

The note comments on the application of Granger non-causality tests of short-run vector error correction models as attempted by Ghali. It is noted that when the dimension of VAR is greater than two, block Granger causality needs to be performed, and that checking variable to variable causality...

A random walk is compared with a Markov switching regimes process in forecasting exchange rates out of sample, using quarterly data on three currencies relative to the US dollar over the period 1973:3-1997:3. The results show that the relative performance of the models varies with the length of...

Cook recently revisited the seminal study of Granger and Lee on asymmetric error correction. Formal criteria found asymmetry to be detected less frequently than was initially suggested by informal inspection. Further results on the detection of asymmetry using the original author's data are...

The paper quantifies the relative efficiency of the ten privatized water and sewerage companies between 1987 and 1997. A one-component fixed-effects panel data model is used to estimate a cost function from which distribution-free firm-specific estimates of operational cost efficiency are...

The standard deviation and skewness of returns of mutual fund portfolios is examined as the number of funds in the portfolio increases. Diversifying across mutual funds substantially reduces portfolio dispersion but also causes an undesirable increase in negative return skewness.

This paper investigates the effect of futures trading in the FTSE Mid 250 index on the underlying spot market using symmetric and asymmetric GARCH methods. Tests for the presence of asymmetries suggest a symmetric model adequately captures the response of volatility to news. Results indicate...