Likelihood based estimation of the parameters of state space models can be carried out via a particle filter.  In this paper we show how to make valid inference on such parameters when the model is incorrect.  In particular we develop a simulation strategy for computing sandwich covariance...

Democracy and media freedom have been suggested as useful tools in the fight against political corruption, but so far their interplay in this fight has received scant attention. We present a game theoretic model which predicts that the corruption-reducing effect of democracy becomes stronger as...

After the global financial crisis, there is greater awareness of the need to understand the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy and hence the potential for financial instability.  Data from the financial flow of funds, previously relatively neglected, are now seen as...

This paper studies uniqueness of equilibrium in symmetric 2 x 2 bayesian games.  It shows that if signals are highly but not perfectly dependent then players play their risk-dominant actions for all but a vanishing set of signal realizations.  In contrast to the global games literature, noise...

The paper examines the notion of a 'developmental state' and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state.  It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies.  It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were...

In von Neumann and Morgenstern's sample model of poker, equilibrium has the first player bet with high and low hands, and check with intermediate hands.  The second player then calls if his hand is sufficiently high.  Betting by the low hands is interpreted as bluffing, and is a pure...

Models of macroeconomic learning are populated by agents who possess a great deal of knowledge of the "true" structure of the economy, and yet ignore the impact of their own learning on that structure; they may learn about an equilibrium, but they do not learn within it.  An alternative learning...

Chinese economic growth has been spectacular in the last 30 years.  We investigate the role of International Joint Ventures with Technology Transfer agreements, an understudied area.  Technology transfer is the traditional mechanism for developing countries to "catch up" and has been a key...

High frequency financial data allows us to learn more about volatility, volatility of volatility and jumps.  One of the key techniques developed in the literature in recent years has been bipower variation and its multipower extension, which estimates time-varying volatility robustly to...

This paper introduces a new class of multivariate volatility models which is easy to estimate using covariance targeting, even with rich dynamics. We call them rotated ARCH (RARCH) models. The basic structure is to rotate the returns and then to fit them using a BEKK-type parameterization of the...