We use translog cost functions to estimate own-price and substitution elasticities of input demands, economies of scale and average costs in Mexican manufacturing. Data from the Mexican Annual Industrial Survey is used for 1996, 2000 and 2003. We show that a model that allows for...

This paper considers empirical tests for the contagion of financial crises that address the endogeneity of contagion by using instrumental variable estimation techniques. Two complications in the application to contagion are that the regression model is potentially incoherent and that it...

The aim of this study is to gauge the impact of the production of knowledge on the accumulation of fixed capital in Brazil. The hypothesis is that investment in R&D causes investment in fixed capital in Brazilian industrial firms. The empirical estimates rest on an IPEA database for information...

Using Dutch data we empirically investigate how financing and innovation vary across firm characteristics. We find that when firms face financial constraints, debt financing and innovation choices are not independent of firm characteristics, and RD slows down. In the absence of financial...

In this survey, we evaluate estimators by comparing their asymptotic variances. The role of the efficiency bound, in this context, is to give a lower bound to the asymptotic variance of an estimator. An estimator with asymptotic variance equal to the efficiency bound can therefore be said to be...

This paper introduces the notion of nowcasting causality for mixed-frequency VARs as the mixed-frequency version of instantaneous causality. We analyze the relationship between nowcasting and Granger causality in the mixed-frequency VAR setting of Ghysels 2012 and illustrate that nowcasting...

Here we present a selected survey in which we attempt to break down the ever burgeoning literature on inference in the presence of weak instruments into issues of estimation, hypothesis testing and confidence interval construction. Within this literature a variety of different approaches have...

We inspect the relationship between quality of work and productivity. Using Spanish aggregate data for the period 2001–2006, we find that quality of work is an additional factor to explain productivity levels in sectors and regions. Consequently, quality of work is not only an objective per...

This paper puts forward the notion that the recent evolution of the U.S. economy can be fully explained by demand-side variables. The authors empirically test some hypotheses about the role of fiscal and monetary policies and of income distribution in shaping effective demand. Using a rigorous...