This paper describes sovereign credit ratings in emerging markets both for a specific year and over time, using quantitative explanatory variables. It turns out that rating adjustments have been worse than what economic fundamentals justify for some countries and also more frequently altered,...

We provide a unified framework for analyzing bootstrapped extremum estimators of nonlinear dynamic models for heterogeneous dependent stochastic processes. We apply our results to the moving blocks bootstrap of Künsch (1989) and Liu and Singh (1992) and prove the first order asymptotic validity...

The article is concerned with pro-natalist policies, examining empirically their effectiveness. There are proposed four hypotheses: 1. Continuous decline of the birthrate, 2. Adaptive model, 3. Natural-rate-hypothesis and 4. Crowding-out-hypothesis. Nine countries are tested: Germany, Italy,...

We provide a unified framework for analyzing bootstrapped extremum estimators of nonlinear dynamic models for heterogeneous dependent stochastic processes. We apply our results to the moving blocks bootstrap of Kunsch (1989) and Liu and Singh (1992) and prove the first order asymptotic validity...

This paper describes sovereign credit ratings in emerging markets both for a specific year and over time, using quantitative explanatory variables. It turns out that rating adjustments have been worse than what economic fundamentals justify for some countries and also more frequently altered,...

This paper describes sovereign credit ratings in emerging markets both for a specific year and over time, using quantitative explanatory variables. It turns out that rating adjustments have been worse than what economic fundamentals justify for some countries and also more frequently altered,...

We analyze the effect of land reform legislation on labor market dynamics in the Romanian economy. We show that the agricultural sector, a source of precarious employment, has become an absorbing state for certain categories of workers who lost their jobs in the nonagricultural sector. A random...

The desalination technology using membrane distillation driven by solar energy is a feasible solution for reducing the energy cost. A dynamic simulation model for a solar driven membrane distillation desalination system (SMDDS) is developed on the Aspen Custom Modeler® (ACM) platform for the...

This paper considers a general class of nonlinear rational-expectations models in which policymakers seek to maximize an objective function that may be household expected utility. We show how to derive a target criterion that is: (i) consistent with the model's structural equations, (ii) strong...