This paper examines the role of external shocks in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations in African countries. We construct a quantitative, stochastic, dynamic, multi-sector equilibrium model of a small open economy calibrated to represent a typical African economy. In our framework, external...

This paper examines the role of external shocks in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations in African countries. We construct a quantitative, stochastic, dynamic, multi-sector equilibrium model of a small open economy calibrated to represent a typical African economy. In our framework, external...

Christopher Sims is one of the leaders in time-series econometrics and empirical macroeconomics and is well known for introducing the VAR approach to econometrics and macroeconomic modelling. Sims' main contribution to empirical macroeconomics was to show how macro-econometric modeling should be...

Economists have studied for a long time how decision-makers allocate scarce resources. The recent literature on rational inattention studies how decision-makers allocate the scarce resource attention. The idea is that decision-makers have a limited amount of attention and have to decide how to...

This paper presents preliminary findings of a study of worker absenteeism. Our main purpose is to identify the various factors that influence the rate of absence for individual workers and to quantify their impact. Candidates for inclusion are measurable factors relating either to the structure...

Dynamic multistage stochastic linear programming has many practical applications for problems whose current decisions have to be made under future uncertainty. There are a variety of methods for solving these problems, including nested Benders decomposition. In this method, recently shown to be...