In this paper, I study the drop of real GDP volatility which has been observed in the United States during the postwar period. This paper thoroughly estimates how much sectoral shifts contributed to this phenomenon called the Great Moderation. In a short section, Stock and Watson (2003) find...

Regulatory authorities in the European electricity sector use benchmarking techniques to determine the cost-efficient production level for an incentive regulation of distribution system operators (DSOs). With nearly 900 DSOs operating in the German electricity sector, of which 200 subject to...

This study measures the impact of fanya juu bunds (an important soil and water conservation technology and the most popular type of contour bund in east Africa) on the value of crop production in a high-rainfall area in the Ethiopian highlands using cross-sectional multiple plot observations. We...

Differentiated tax rates on labor and capital income are found to be optimal in this study, where agents choose occupation based on lifetime income net of tuition costs. Efficient revenue raising in a case where the government can not observe educational effort implies that the government should...

The aim of this paper is to quantify the relative importance of motivations based on warm-glow, social and moral norms and cost of time used recycling on household recycling efforts. We also test for crowding-out of intrinsic motivations when recycling is perceived as mandatory. We find that the...

In this paper we develop a full information maximum likelihood method for the estimation of a joint model for the choice of length of schooling and the corresponding earnings equation. The model for schooling is assumed to be an ordered probit model, whereas the earnings equation is allowed to...

Oil price shocks are thought to have played a prominent role in U.S. economic activity. In this paper, we employ Bayesian methods with a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of world economic activity to identify the various sources of oil price shocks and economic fluctuation and to...

Contrary to standard agnostic statistical approaches an output gap estimate based on a New Keynesian Small Open Economy model provides the possibility to analyze the driving forces of the variation in GDP caused by nominal rigidities. This paper makes use of this and provides an estimate of a...

We propose a method to incorporate information from Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models into Dynamic Factor Analysis. The method combines a procedure previously applied for Bayesian Vector Autoregressions and a Gibbs Sampling approach for Dynamic Factor Models. The factors in...

How large are the economies of scale of living together? And how do partners share their resources? The first question is usually answered by equivalence scales. Traditional estimation and application of equivalence scales assumes equal sharing of income within the household. This paper uses...