The global financial crisis is leading to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the importance of model and parameter uncertainty to assess external imbalances. Panel data, current account models, model...

In Fall 2009, officials from Chicago Public Schools changed their assignment mechanism for coveted spots at selective college preparatory high schools midstream. After asking about 14,000 applicants to submit their preferences for schools under one mechanism, the district asked them re-submit...

This paper presents an analysis of the findings of a survey on a sample of Portuguese firms. The main aim is to identify some relevant characteristics about the dynamics of prices and wages in PortugalSurvey data; Probit modelsThe most important conclusions are: i) changes to wages are more...

There has been a long dispute about the relative importance of country versus industry diversification. We test the hypothesis that institutional ownership affects the relative importance of country and industry effects in explaining stock returns worldwide. We find that industry effects become...

In the Caribbean Basin countries as in many other parts of the world, unemployment has become since the early 1980s one of the major dimensions of economic dysfunctions affecting societies. With levels that are above 15% and often reaching values of up to 20% or 30% during the decades 1980, 1990...

A conceptual reflection will be carried out and a practical and methodological guide will be provided to the work undertaken with the aim of updating for 2005 a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) constructed for 2001 as a database for a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for the Azores. The...

The labour market participation rate of older Belgian workers is one of the lowest of the OECD. Early retirement, passive labour market measures and the wage bargaining system which makes older (white-collar) workers relatively more expensive are features that discourage employment of older...

The objective of this paper is twofold. The first focus is on a productivity analysis, including an assessment of the impact on productivity of investments in capital, labour and other inputs (energy, material). To this end a growth accounting system is developed, although this is more than an...

It is evidences that the actual global crisis affected the convergence process in EU. Generally, just new adhered countries were more affected by the actual crisis. Today all forecasts are suffering by uncertainty. There are different opinions regarding how deep and how long the convergence...

Product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. Classical trade theory postulates that the elimination of trade barriers improves welfare by reducing the wedge between domestic and import prices as well as the ensuing deadweight loss. An entirely different reason for the...