Bankruptcy legislation has important welfare effects on the aggregate economy through effects on prices of and access to credit. Policy makers face a trade-off between insuring individuals against adverse shocks and providing incentives to repay debt. While the U.S. regime has a strong insurance...

The fixed-b asymptotic framework provides refinements in the use of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent variance estimators. We show however that the fixed-b limiting distributions of t-statistics are not pivotal when the variance of the underlying data generating process changes...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the intra-urban spatial distribution of employment in the agglomeration of Ile-de-France in 1978 and 1997. In that purpose, exploratory spatial data analysis is used in order to identify employment centers and a sectoral analysis of the CBD and the subcenters...

Since Florida (2002b) revealed the importance of creative skills on economic growth, the notion of "creative class" has been deepened to analyze factors that shape the geography of talent of creative people. In spite of some strong correlations between artistic or cultural vibrancy, Third...

This paper discusses two longstanding questions in growth econometrics which involve multiple hypothesis testing. In cross sectional GDP growth regressions many variables are simultaneously tested for significance. Similarly, when investigating pairwise convergence of output in panel data sets...

The so-called Cauchy estimator uses the sign as instrument for the first lag in autoregressions, and the resulting t-type statistic has a standard normal distribution even in the unit root case. Thus, nonstandard asymptotics of the usual unit root tests such as the augmented Dickey-Fuller [ADF]...

In this paper, we propose three new tests for serial correlation in the disturbances of fixed-effects panel data models. First, a modified Bhargava, Franzini and Narendranathan (1982) panel Durbin-Watson statistic that does not need to be tabulated as it follows a standard normal distribution....

Many regression models are used to provide some recommendations in private sectors or government public policy. Data are usually obtained from several districts which may varies from one to the others. Assuming there is no significant variation among local data, a single global model may provide...

The term urban sprawl is often used to describe apparent inefficiencies of spatial development, including disproportionate growth of urban areas and excessive leapfrog development. In Switzerland, where open space is a scare resource, sprawl takes place all over the country. It goes at the...

This paper argues that typical applications of panel unit root tests should take possible nonstationarity in the volatility process of the innovations of the panel time series into account. Nonstationarity volatility arises for instance when there are structural breaks in the innovation...