The Pareto distribution has been widely used to model income distribution and inequality. The tail index and the Gini index are typically computed by iteration using Maximum Likelihood and are usually interpreted in terms of the Lorenz curve. We derive an alternative method by considering a...

Purpose - This paper examines the effect of specific macroeconomic variables on tax revenue policy in Oman, as an oil-dependent economy, using annual data from 1991 to 2020. Design/methodology/approach - The autoregressive distributed lag model is used, and its outcomes were verified by numerous...

Germany has introduced a comprehensive package of staggered business tax breaks to accelerate business investment and give new momentum to economic growth. The key components of the so-called investment booster program are a temporary tax write-off on machinery and other equipment investments to...

We investigate the long-run relationship between organized crime and corruption using data from 20 Italian regions over 30 years. As Rose-Ackerman and Palifka (2018) argue, corruption and organized crime often go together. Our study contributes to the literature in several ways in terms of...

This paper provides a critical examination of the empirical basis of the output convergence debate in the light of recent developments in the analysis of dynamic heterogeneous panels with interactive effects. It shows that popular tools such as Barro's cross-country regressions and two-way fixed...

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate income tax rates (CITR) and firm-level productivity growth using AMADEUS data of 304,410 observations from 79,842 European firms from 2006 to 2019. The results imply a robust non-linear relationship: higher CITRs are positively...

We estimate monetary wage returns to academic-track education, Germany’s elite secondary school type granting university entrance. Because academic-track attendance and subsequent university education are institutionally linked, we disentangle their contributions using a causal mediation...

We propose a new approach to estimate selection-corrected quantiles of the gender wage gap. Our method employs instrumental variables that explain variation in the latent variable but, conditional on the latent process, do not directly affect selection. We provide semiparametric identification...

This paper provides large-scale evidence linking the economic effects of childcare programs to social skills measured in adulthood. We examine Finland's first national public childcare program, and document that it increased parental labor supply -through retirement- while reducing the...

Evidence since the XIX century shows that whereas the demand for M1 is uniformly stable (Benati, Lucas, Nicolini, and Weber, 2021), the demand for broader aggregates is stable under monetary regimes making inflation strongly mean-reverting-such as the Gold Standard and inflation-targeting-but it...

Response times contain information about economically relevant but unobserved variables like willingness to pay, preference intensity, quality, or happiness. We provide a general characterization of the properties of latent variables that can be detected using response time data. Our theoretical...

I study price level determination in a currency union when some member countries' government securities earn a convenience yield. These "convenience assets" generate fiscal seigniorage revenues that, given appropriate fiscal and monetary policies, back the union's price level, much like primary...

There is limited theoretical understanding of cost pass-through in markets where prices are dispersed. This paper analyzes cost pass-through within a framework that encompasses many models in the price dispersion literature where consumers vary in the number of firms they consider. We...

This paper investigates the long-term economic consequences of childhood nutrition in the Philippines, focusing on the mediating roles of cognitive development and schooling. Using longitudinal data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), we apply a sequential mediation...

This research aimed to identify existence of a New Keynesian Phillips Curve in Vietnam. The examined period was 2012Q2 - 2025Q2, using secondary macroeconomics data and the Generalised Moments Method at 95% level of confidence. The dependent variables were price inflation and wage inflation,...

This article investigates the dynamic interrelationships between the shadow economy, inflation, and economic growth in 15 countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region over the period 1991-2017. The study employs a simultaneous equations framework estimated through the Three-Stage...

Forecasts that minimize mean squared forecast error (MSE) often exhibit excessive volatility, limiting their practical applicability. We address this accuracy smoothness trade-off by introducing a Multivariate Smooth Sign Accuracy (M-SSA) framework, which extracts smoothed components from...

The continuous expansion of income disparities poses serious threats to sustainable socioeconomic development. Concurrently, as a key driver of technological advancement, the influence of innovation on shaping income inequality trends has been extensively debated. This study employs panel...

We propose a nonparametric framework for estimating the extremal index that captures the persistence of extreme observations. The framework provides unified and simple procedures for verifying the well-known local dependence condition D(ᵈ) (un), which characterizes the extremal index yet is...

Many instrumental variables applications specify a single Bernoulli treatment. But instruments may change outcomes through multiple pathways or by varying treatment intensity. Lottery instruments that boost charter school enrollment, for instance, may affect outcomes by lengthening time enrolled...

We put forward a Dynamic Regularized Parametric (DRP) approach for active portfolio policies. We build upon the parametric policy framework of Brandt et al. (2009) that directly links the portfolio weights to a limited set of asset characteristics. This yields a parsimonious specification that...

This paper provides large-scale evidence linking the economic effects of childcare programs to social skills measured in adulthood. We examine Finland's first national public childcare program, and document that it increased parental labor supply - through retirement - while reducing the...