This paper shows that realised power variation and its extension we introduce here called realised bipower variation is somewhat robust to rare jumps. We show realised bipower variation estimates integrated variance in SV models --- thus providing a model free and consistent alternative to...

This paper applies a framework which addresses the vagueness of poverty. The `core poor` are those who are unambiguously poor. In applying the framework we use Sen`s capability approach and results from a recent survey. These results suggest that some South Africans set tough standards for...

This study provides statistical evidence that Russian rural/urban wages diverged substantially during the industrialization of Russia in the late nineteenth century. However, over time both the variation declined and integration somewhat increased as rural labour responded to new opportunities....

This paper considers a model of endogenous growth with two sectors. It shows that it may be desirable to concentrate research in one sector, and so have unbalanced growth, but that the pressure of competition in research may cause the private sector to spread research too widely, and so have...

This paper takes a new look at the classic concession game. It argues that exit from an asymmetric war of attrition is likely to be instant. Selecting a unique equilibrium using a craziness perturbation device, it finds a notion of stochastic strength determines the outcome, with a...

To investigate risk-sharing within the household, we model nutritional status as a durable good and we look at the consequences of individual health shocks. For household allocation to be pareto-efficient, households should pool shocks to income. We also investigate whether households can smooth...

A dynamic model for limited dependent variables is proposed, which estimation does not rely on simulation methods. A latent conditional mean function which is measurable with respect to past and observable information circumvents the solution of a T-dimensional integral and yields a simple and...

Using survey data and a field experiment to measure agents` risk and time preferences, we identify the agent-type that is free to reveal its preferences through decisions about pension system participation. Thus, we show that in Chile the appropriate focus for policy makers interested in the...

Rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial idiosyncratic and common risk, resulting in high income variability. Households in risky environments have developed sophisticated (ex-ante) risk-management and (ex-post) risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance via...

By generalizing Hamiltons model of the US business cycle to a three-regime Markov-switching vector autoregressive model, this paper analyzes regime shifts in the stochastic process of economic growth in the US, Japan and Europe over the last four decades. Empirical evidence is established for...