The present paper examines regional convergence in Greece using g - and † -convergence concepts as well as Markov chain analysis for a NUTS-3 classification. The g -concept indicates convergence at the rate 2% (1971-81) and 4% (1982-93). Markov chain analysis, however, provides strong evidence...

TSIONAS E. G. (2000) Regional growth and convergence: evidence from the United States, Reg. Studies 34 , 231-238. The paper considers regional convergence in the US. Both g - and † -convergence tests indicate that in the period 1977-96 regional incomes do not converge, yet kernel density...

This paper investigates the Abrams curve, that is the relationship between government size and unemployment, for 10 European countries over the period 1961-1999. This paper uses credible causality inferences that do not depend on the stationarity or cointegration properties of the data. The...

This article proposes a general empirical method for the estimation of marginal cost of individual firms. The new method employs the smooth coefficient model, which has a number of appealing features when applied to cost functions. The empirical analysis uses data from a unique sample from which...

This article offers a methodology to address the endogeneity of inputs in the input distance function (IDF) formulation of the production processes. We propose to tackle endogenous input ratios appearing in the normalized IDF by considering a flexible (simultaneous) system of the IDF and the...

The paper takes up inference in the stochastic frontier model with gamma distributed inefficiency terms, without restricting the gamma distribution to known integer values of its shape parameter (the Erlang form). The paper shows that Gibbs sampling with data augmentation can be used in a...

In this paper we reconsider the formal estimation of the risk of financial intermediaries. Risk is modeled as the variability of the profit function of a representative intermediary, here bank, as formally considered in finance theory. In turn, banking theory suggests that risk is determined...

This paper investigates the business cycles in output and real output in nine countries. We detect the long-run and short-run relationships between the cyclical components of output and real output, using Autoregressive Distributed Lag and Error Correlation Models, respectively.

Cost minimization and profit maximization behavioral assumptions are most widely used in microeconomic theory to analyze firm behavior. However, in practice researchers do not know whether every firm in the sample maximizes profit or minimizes cost. In this paper we address this problem via a...