TIME VARIATION IN THE DYNAMICS OF WORKER FLOWS: EVIDENCE FROM NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE

Vector autoregressive methods have been used to model the interrelationships between job vacancy rates, job separation rates and job‐finding rates using tools such as impulse response analysis. We investigate whether such impulse responses change across the business cycle or over time, by estimating time‐varying parameter–vector autoregressions for data from North America (the USA and Canada) and Europe (France, Spain and the UK). While the adjustment process of the labour market to shocks in Canada and the USA is similar, we find the adjustment process differs much more across the European countries, with greater persistence in shocks relative to the USA and Canada. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Considerazioni generali sull’impostazione bayesiana di problemi non parametrici

Si fanno alcune considerazioni di natura generale sui problemi statistici non parametrici e sulla loro risoluzione dal punto di vista bayesiano. Dopo aver posto in evidenza l’importanza delle medie associative come strumenti di analisi statistica dei suddetti problemi, ci si propone di determinare la distribuzione iniziale e finale di una generica media associativa nell’ipotesi che le misure di probabilità assegnabili al fenomeno in esame siano rette da un processo di Dirichlet. Ricordate le proprietà fondamentali di tale processo, si rinvia la risoluzione del problema posto alla seconda parte del lavoro.     

Small sample properties of ML estimator in Vasicek and CIR models: a simulation experiment

Decisions in Economics and Finance - In this paper we analyze small sample properties of the ML estimation procedure in Vasicek and CIR models. In particular, we consider short time series, with a...     

US dollar/Euro exchange rate: a monthly econometric model for forecasting

The intent of this paper is the construction of an econometric model able to produce reliable and reasonable forecasts for the US dollar/Euro real exchange rate. In order to achieve this aim, an area-wide model is analysed. The aggregation is motivated by the fact that the Euro-zone is under a single monetary policy. Furthermore, a more parsimonious parametric model enables one to consider an important source of non-stationarity given by the presence of structural breaks using the multivariate cointegration analysis. Against the Meese-Rogoff critique, the out-of-sample one-step-ahead forecasts using actual values of the exogenous produced by the estimated VECM are reasonably satisfactory.     

Endogenous institutions in bureaucratic compliance games

We consider a set-up where two governments have either conflicting or matching preferences on the provision of differentiated (local) goods supplied by a common monopoly bureau. We develop a two-stage game. At stage-1, the two governments decide whether or not to merge into a single institution. At stage-2, all players simultaneously and independently take their decisions in terms of production and rents, with perfect knowledge of the other players' strategies. We solve the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of this game, and show that, if the bureau immediately updates its objective function to institutional changes, then the governments always prefer merging. However, if there is an initial bureaucratic inertia in adjusting the bureau's objective function to the institutional change, then ruling politicians may prefer decentralisation to centralisation, depending on the strategic properties of the compliance game and on their own discounting. Received: May 1999 / Accepted April 2000     

Short-term inflation projections: A Bayesian vector autoregressive approach

In this paper we construct a large Bayesian Vector Autoregressive model (BVAR) for the Euro area that captures the complex dynamic inter-relationships between the main components of the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) and their determinants. The model generates accurate conditional and unconditional forecasts in real-time. We find a significant pass-through effect of oil-price shocks on core inflation and a strong Phillips curve during the Great Recession.     

Financialization and Income Inequality in the United States, 1967–2010

This article presents a historical overview of the late 20^th‐century advent of financialization, that is, the unprecedented growth of the financial sector. We summarize its origins and consequences, particularly greater income inequality. An econometric model quantifies the relationship. We conclude that along with higher unemployment and an eroding minimum wage, the growth of the U.S. financial sector has contributed to the exacerbation of inequality in recent decades.     

Weird Exoskeletons: Propositional Politics and the Making of Home in Underground Bucharest

The article explores the politics of life underground in Bucharest, Romania. It focuses on a tunnel passing under Bucharest's central train station, where a community of drug users and so‐called ‘homeless’ have made a long‐standing home, using a space that many others considered uninhabitable. Relying on extensive ethnographic observations and interviews undertaken within the tunnels, the article traces and illustrates the socio‐material entanglements characterizing life underground. It frames this assemblage of bodies, veins, syringes, substances and various relationships of power and affect, as a ‘propositional politics’ of home and life at the margins. Such a politics speaks of drug addiction and extreme marginalization, but also of a sense of belonging, reciprocal trust and care. In tracing such a politics, the article does not aim to romanticize the status of home in the underground or to treat it as the marginal antithesis of normative homeliness, but to reveal the ways in which an affirmative, self‐grounding politics of home emerges from the immanence of tunnel life within the fabric of the city. As such, the article contributes to debates around homing practices in conditions of uninhabitability and proposes a radical approach to the politics of life at the margins in the contemporary urban.