This papers finds evidence of fractional integration for a number of monthly ex post real interest rate series using the GPH semiparametric estimator on data from fourteen European countries and the US. However, we pose empirical questions on certain time series requirements that emerge from...

The structural vector autoregression (SVAR) has become a central tool for research in empirical macroeconomics. Because the vast majority of these models are exactly identified, researchers have traditionally relied upon the informal use of prior information to compare alternative...

This paper discusses two alternative two-part models for fractional response variables that are defined as ratios of integers. The first two-part model assumes a Binomial distribution and known group size. It nests the one-part fractional response model proposed by Papke and Wooldridge (1996)...

The analysis of news in the financial context has gained a prominent interest in the last years. This is because of the possible predictive power of such content especially in terms of associated sentiment/mood. In this paper, we focus on a specific aspect of financial news analysis: how the...

Conventional wisdom says that the middle classes in many developed countries have recently suffered losses, in terms of both the share of the total population belonging to the middle class, and also their share in total income. Here, distribution-free methods are developed for inference on these...

A standard test for weak instruments compares the first-stage F-statistic to a table of critical values obtained by Stock and Yogo (2005) using simulations. We derive a closed-form solution for the expectation from which these critical values are derived, as well as present some second-order...