In a competitive electricity market with highly fluctuated electricity price, local distribution companies (LDCs) need to purchase electric power from several energy markets, such as spot markets, long-term tolling agreements and forward contracts, to maximize profits and minimize risks....

The consensus in growth literature has recognized the significant effects of institutions (including social capital and political institutions) towards economic growth. Utilizing the World Value Survey (WVS)’s trust variable that has often been used to represent social capital, and employing...

Stylized facts of the business cycle in the G7 countries are derived using a stochastic trend model, which allows for structural breaks in the underlying series in various ways. The results are compared to those of Backus and Kehoe's paper (1992) which used the Hoderick-Prescott filter. Numerous...

In the paper we consider one of the faster growing Central European emerging markets: the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE), in order to see whether the market becomes more weak-form efficient over time. The Hungarian exchange is selected because it is the oldest stock exchange operating in the...

In this paper we investigate the relevance of the Balassa-Samuelson effect to the determination of regional inflation in China, for the period 1985 – 2000. To do this, we first construct annual measures of Chinese inflation and industry input on regional and sectoral basis. Then we generalize...