The Laplace mixture distribution for stock share returns is derived from conditional N(0, sigma-squared) distribution. The conditioning variable, sigma-squared, is assumed to be an exponentially distributed random variable. This offers a natural stochastic interpretation of the risk involved...

Minimum Absolute Deviation (MAD) estimation method is used to examine weekday anomaly in 18 international stock exchanges between 1990 and 2003. Weekday return anomaly is found with OLS method in two and with MAD method in eight stock exchanges. Empirical test distributions of F -type test for...

The socio-economic impacts of microcredits on women's welfare were studied in northeastern South Africa using a qualitative semi-structured interviewing method. The study focuses particularly on the benefits, disadvantages and challenges obtained from The Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF)...

Realized stock return volatility is modelled with a distribution based on the Laplace distribution. The moment properties of suggested volatility distribution, η(σ|λ), are derived. The properties of distribution correspond to the empirical regularities found in the finance literature....

Enterprises in post-socialist and transition economies often participate in providing infrastructure and social services to the surrounding community which in the Russian legal setting should be local authorities’ responsibility. We propose that this bundling of social and infrastructure goods...

A non-parametric time series testing is suggested to analyse the convergence of international output per-capita gaps. Non-parametric tests are based on signs and ranks of time series properties of output differences. The methods are applied to logs of USA percapita income differences for 16 OECD...

The "shock persistence" of Finnish adjusted quarterly real GNP series in logarithms from 1954:1 to 1990:4 is analyzed using variance ratio estimators. The results indicate that the random walk component of the series is not big. The small sample properties of variance ratio estimators are...