In a recent article, Geroski and Walters (Economic Journal, 105, 1995, 916-928) suggest that changes in demand Granger cause changes in innovative activity but not vice versa. This note shows that inappropriate modelling methods can lead to such conclusions which exclude the possibility of...

The holiday effect is one of the most perplexing of all seasonal anomalies. Based on evidence using pre-1987 equity returns, this anomaly has been shown to be responsible for somewhere between 30 to 50% of the total return on the market while exhibiting below average variances (Lakonishok and...

This paper analyses the impact of the rate of inflation and German short-term interest rates over the short-term interest rates of a number of European Union Member States. The study has been carried out by considering two subperiods, namely from 1980 to 1988 and from 1989 to 1996, with these...

Seemingly Unrelated Regression models were used to examine the factors that influence the corn acreage in selected states in the US. Planted acre was modelled as a function of lagged planted acres, lagged production, and lagged price for states California, Florida, New Jersey, New York,...

This paper examines the argument that monetary union requires an equalization of labour standards in member countries. It is shown that labour standards have an influence on national rates of unemployment, but that it is independent from monetary union.

This paper compares unemployment durations of persons on different unemployment compensation schemes from the start of the unemployment spell. It focuses on the probability of leaving unemployment to take up a full-time job. Data on actual benefit receipts are used for the analysis. The sample...

The purpose of this research is to examine some competing assumptions regarding the hiring behaviour of major league baseball clubs. One hypothesis is that owners and general managers of teams enter the free agent market with a view to attracting the best talent available in order to win games....

A simple model, based on the binomial theorem, is employed to predict that the probability of matching buyers and sellers increases with the number of transactions. The ask-bid spread, interpreted as a measure of liquidity, is assumed to vary negatively with the probability of matching buyers...

This paper investigates the phenomenon of covariance matrix underestimation leading to possibly misleading inference which can arise from a potential pitfall in approximate GLS estimation of the regression model with ARMA disturbances.

New growth-trade theories have emphasized the contribution of international trade to economic growth through its effect on capital accumulation. This paper tests the hypothesis that export oriented sectors attain higher rates of investment using panel data techniques and sectoral data from the...