This paper presents an indirect approach to investigate the possible existence of measurement error bias in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices for the UK and Italy. Our empirical results show that there is no significant evidence for a bias in the UK, nor for Italy prior to the introduction...

This paper analyzes the role of complexity in production on the level of output and on its rate of growth. We develop an endogenous growth model with human capital accumulation, where increased complexity could exert either a positive or a negative effect on the level of output but always a...

The need for a proper burial is widely felt. This paper makes use of an original data set to explore the relationship between the prices of cemetery plots and the prices of housing. It considers a simple model where the services from both real estate and funeral homes enter individuals’...

This paper presents a model of co-ordination failures based on market power and local oligopoly. The economy exhibits a multiplicity of Pareto-ranked equilibria. The introduction of uncertainty generates an endogenous equilibrium selection process, due to a strategic use of information by firms....

Knowledge of how South Korean firms choose their capital structures has particular value due to the country's specific corporate structure and the role of leverage in the evolution of its financial crisis of 1997. Using a large panel for the years 1992-2001 we investigate the evolution and...

This paper examines the inflationary consequences of a currency changeover in a simple model of the catering market. It is shown that the change in cash denomination acts as a coordination device shifting the industry to a high-price equilibrium. Empirical evidence based on data from the...

This paper shows that the migration of educated workers abroad can convey a positive signal about the ability of native talents. When there is uncertainty about the distribution of talents in the donor country and/or about the effectiveness of its education system, migrants may reveal...

This paper examines the impact of regulatory intervention to cut termination rates of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones. Under quite general conditions of competition, theory suggests that lower termination charges will result in higher prices for mobile subscribers, a phenomenon known as...

For non-stationary vector autoregressive models (VAR hereafter, or VAR with moving average, VARMA hereafter), we show that the presence of common cyclical features or cointegration leads to a reduction of the order of the implied univariate autoregressive-moving average (ARIMA hereafter) models....

We build on the existing literature in Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to analyze the main incentive issues in PPPs and the shape of optimal contracts in those contexts. We present a basic model of procurement in a multi-task environment in which a risk averse firm chooses non-contractible...