The purpose of this paper is to introduce and examine two alternative, although similar, approaches to the Moving Blocks and subsampling Bootstraps to bootstrapping the estimator of the parameters for time series regression models. More specifically, the first bootstrap is based on resampling...

This paper constructs a time series of annuity rates in the UK for 1957-2002, and examines the pricing of UK annuities, and the relationship between the accumulation and decumulation phases of a defined contribution pension scheme by focusing on the properties of the pension replacement ratio....

Relative poverty in the UK has risen massively since 1979 mainly because of increasing worklessness, rising earnings dispersion and benefits indexed to prices, not wages. So poverty is now at a very high level. The economic forces underlying this are the significant shift in demand against the...

We initiated a survey to examine whether the transition from national currencies to the Euro involved significant increases in transaction times. Based on our sample of 42 observations, we found that the pure transaction time for making change did actually increase, while queuing time increased...

A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucracies and private non-profits is the importance of missions, as opposed to profit, as an organizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed by motivated agents who subscribe to the mission....

This paper estimates the impact of recorded domestic property crime on property prices in the London area. Crimes in the Criminal Damage category have a significant negative impact on prices. Burglaries have no measurable impact on prices, even after allowing for the potential dependence of...

This paper documents the impact of Argentina's recent economic crises on different aspects of poverty, with a special focus on the economic collapse of 2002. We discuss the methodology of poverty measurement in Argentina and we use a simple rule to compensate for the lack of regional poverty...

The allocation of UK personal sector wealth across five broad asset categories (net financial wealth, housing (and durable assets) wealth, state pension wealth, private pension wealth, and human capital) is investigated using the FAIDS (financial AIDS) model. Apart from total wealth and returns,...

This paper studies how investors react to public messages that may be optimistically biased. We first construct a communication game between an investor and a (possibly) biased securities analyst. We find an equilibrium characterised by the following properties: first, the investor reacts more...