In the six years since the advent of the euro, short-term exchange rate volatility against the U.S. dollar is unchanged from that of predecessor currencies. The wide down/up swing of the euro/dollar exchange over six years is no greater than that seen in earlier periods, especially 1980–1987....

This study details the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's significant price discovery regulatory authority over exempt, over-the-counter contracts, as introduced in 2008. A vector autoregressive model is used to conclude that three cash-settled natural gas contracts traded on the...

Recent research shows that the majority of cross-national variation in institutions is related to history. The within variation however is somewhat less explored. Using panel data covering the periods 1865–1940 and 1980–2000 and 31 and 103 countries respectively, we find that the within...

We examine how oil prices and exchange rates co-move using two measures of dependence: correlations and copulas and document two main findings for crude oil prices and a range of currencies: oil price–exchange rate dependence is in general weak, although it rose substantially in the aftermath...

Government payments have been a part of agriculture since 1933 and at no time has the government stated a policy objective of decreasing the agricultural labor force. The reality of the matter may be considerably different. Using time series data and new econometric techniques, this study finds...

We model pre-euro Spanish monetary policy and use our findings to assess the compatibility of the interest rates set by the ECB since 1999 with Spanish macro-fundamentals. We find that in the 1990s Spain implemented successfully a monetary strategy tailored to its own domestic fundamentals; and...

This work provides an explanation for the puzzling trade-off between labor productivity and capital accumulation, occurred in Italian energy sector from the late 1980s onwards. By using a vector autoregressive model, we decompose labor productivity into technological and non technological...

Carbon taxes have largely been discussed as individual country measures (even if taken simultaneously) aimed to reduce carbon emissions, slow global warning, and internalizing the externalities associated with carbon generating activities, such as power generation. There has however been little...

The study searches for an optimal Dollar–Euro exchange rate policy for the US and the Euro Area (EA) countries. To achieve this, it explores the causal links between the US Dollar–Euro exchange rate and three key macroeconomic variables. The empirical investigation is carried out in an Error...

Governments and central banks need to have an accurate and timely assessment of gross domestic product's (GDP) growth rate for the current quarter, as this is essential for providing a reliable and early analysis of the current economic situation. This paper presents a series of models conceived...