In this paper, we study marginal and conditional skewness in financial returns for nine time series of major international stock indices. For this purpose, we develop a new variant of the GARCH model with dynamic skewness and kurtosis. Our empirical results indicate that there is no evidence of...

In this article, we study goodness of fit tests for some distributions of the innovations which are usually adopted to explain the behavior of financial time series. Inference is developed in the context of GARCH-type models. Functional bootstrap tests are employed, assuming that the conditional...

Credit rating agencies are frequently criticized for producing sovereign ratings that do not accurately reflect the economic and political fundamentals of rated countries. This article discusses how the home country of rating agencies could affect rating decisions as a result of political...

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Donor countries political motives might reduce the effectiveness of conditionality, channel aid to inferior projects, reduce the aid bureaucracy s effort, and change the power structure in the...

Does economic freedom increase the utility of an average citizen? Public choice theory in particular has emphasized the shortcomings of governments and voting processes, and the advantages of relying on markets and individual decision making. However, an increasing amount of people are refusing...

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Donor countries’ political motives might reduce the effectiveness of conditionality, channel aid to inferior projects, reduce the aid bureaucracy’s effort, and change the power structure in...