The central concern of this paper is the provision in a time series moment condition framework of practical recommendations of confidence regions for parameters whose coverage probabilities are robust to the strength or weakness of identification. To this end we develop Pearson-type test...

In this paper we assess the possibility of producing unbiased forecasts for fiscal variables in the euro area by comparing a set of procedures that rely on different information sets and econometric techniques. In particular, we consider ARMA models, VARs, small scale semi-structural models at...

The fiscal performance of many sub-Saharan African countries has been quite dismal over the past, with a number of them accumulating huge deficits. This paper examines fiscal sustainability in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). It departs from the standard model of fiscal sustainability and...

The fiscal performance of many sub-Saharan African countries has been quite dismal over the past, with a number of them accumulating huge deficits. This paper examines fiscal sustainability in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). It departs from the standard model of fiscal sustainability and...

Many water utilities use outdoor watering restrictions based on assigned weekly watering days to promote conservation and delay costly capacity expansions. We find that such policies can lead to unintended consequences - customers who adhere to the prescribed schedule use more water than those...

This is a fine, useful book on the history and structure of macroeconometric models. Its perspective is “applied” and has a “positivistic bias”. It gives a good (or not so good) picture of the state of the art. The problems of the now “Big Science” deserve more attention than the...

A tradition from Knight (1921) argues that more risk tolerant individuals are more likely to become entrepreneurs, but perform worse. We test these predictions with two risk tolerance proxies: stock market participation and personal leverage. Using investment data for 400,000 individuals, we...