The economic literature examining changes in divorce rates is not conclusive since legal reforms have been found to have permanent, transitory or no effect on divorce rates. This paper studies differences in divorce rates among 16 European countries from 1930 to 2006, by exploiting time-series...

This paper explores the response of the divorce rate to law reform introducing unilateral divorce after controlling for law reforms concerning the aftermath of divorce, which are omitted from most previous works. We introduce two main policy changes that have swept the U.S. since the late 1970s;...

This study investigates the determinants of the U.S. divorce rate from 1929 to 2006, with particular emphasis on explaining its surge in the mid-1960s. The main finding is that the divorce rate and female labor-force participation, or equivalently female participation in higher education, are...

This paper explores the role of the birth control pill on divorce. To identify its effect, we use a quasi experiment exploiting the differences in the language of the Comstock anti-obscenity statutes approved in the 1800s and early 1900s in the US. Results suggest that banning the sales of oral...

We construct one triple-threshold GARCH model to analyze the asymmetric response of mean and conditional volatility. In parameter estimation, we apply Griddy-Gibbs sampling method, which require less work in selection of starting values and pre-run. As we apply this model in Chinese stock...

This paper details particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (PMCMC) techniques for analysis of unobserved component time series models using several economic data sets. PMCMC provides a very compelling, computationally fast and efficient framework for estimation and model comparison. For instance, we...

This paper proposes full-Bayes priors for time-varying parameter vector autoregressions (TVP-VARs) which are more robust and objective than existing choices proposed in the literature. We formulate the priors in a way that they allow for straightforward posterior computation, they require...

Particle Gibbs with ancestor sampling (PG-AS) is a new tool in the family of sequential Monte Carlo methods. We apply PG-AS to the challenging class of unobserved component time series models and demonstrate its flexibility under different circumstances. We also combine discrete structural...

We use Bayesian factor regression models to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for the U.S. Within this context we develop Bayesian model averaging methods that allow the data to select which variables should be included in the FCI or not. We also examine the importance of different...

This double-issue contains 11 papers invited for the first special issue on “Computational methods for Russian economic and financial modelling”. It was an attempt to explore and bring together practical, state-of-the-art applications of computational techniques with a particular focus on...