Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).     

An empirical note about estimation and forecasting Latin American Forex returns volatility: the role of long memory and random level shifts components

Portuguese Economic Journal - A set of RLS-type models with ARMA and ARFIMA dynamics is estimated and compared in a forecasting exercise with ARFIMA, GARCH and FIGARCH models. It is an extension of...     

The education pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy: a convergence analysis

Empirica - In March 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy ‘for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ in the EU. Education is a major pillar of the Europe...     

All work intensity is not created equal: Effort motives,job satisfaction and quit intentions at a grocery chain

Prior research has shown that the well-being of employees engaged in intensive work can vary with the discretion their jobs afford regarding how and when to carry out the work. This article explores a different avenue. It argues that well-being also varies with employees’ individual motives for working intensively. The article introduces self-determination theory to the domain of work intensity and focuses on two hypotheses. The first is whether intensive work driven by explicit or implicit incentives is more positively associated with an employee's job satisfaction than intensive work driven by job demands. The second is whether intensive work driven by intrinsic motives is more positively associated with job satisfaction than that driven by explicit or implicit incentives. In both these cases, the article also examines whether equivalent effects exist on (reduced) quit intentions. Original data from a major Greek grocery chain provide corroborative evidence that is robust to a rich set of covariates, including increasingly demanding adjustments for job discretion. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of why differences in well-being exist among employees performing intensive work, with implications for workers and employers.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

Socio-demographics,political attitudes and informal sector employment: A cross-country analysis

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between informal sector employment and micro-level socio-demographic characteristics, political acts and attitudes, and individual norms. Using self-reported individual micro-level data from the World Values Survey for seven developing countries (China, Ecuador, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and Yemen), our cross-country regressions and principal component analysis reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals are strong predictors of their informal sector employment. Our estimations further document that individual preferences for an economically strong, interventionist and egalitarian state and confidence in state and political institutions are positively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment, whereas variables associated with confidence in free market institutions and support for competition are negatively and significantly correlated with informal sector employment. We also show that individuals who participate either actively or inactively in peaceful and lawful political processes are significantly less likely to work in the informal sector. Finally, we document that individual norms, such as religiosity and tax morale, are negatively correlated with informal sector employment. Throughout our analysis, instead of having to rely on ad-hoc informality categorizations of third parties, we base our measurement of informal sector employment directly on the self-evaluation of individuals, who have the best information on the degree of their informality.     

Data-based mechanistic modelling and forecasting globally averaged surface temperature

The main objective of this paper it to model the dynamic relationship between global averaged measures of Total Radiative Forcing (RTF) and surface temperature, measured by the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA), and then use this model to forecast the GTA. The analysis utilizes the Data-Based Mechanistic (DBM) approach to the modelling and forecasting where, in this application, the unobserved component model includes a novel hybrid Box-Jenkins stochastic model in which the relationship between RTF and GTA is based on a continuous time transfer function (differential equation) model. This model then provides the basis for short term, inter-annual to decadal, forecasting of the GTA, using a transfer function form of the Kalman Filter, which produces a good prediction of the ‘pause’ or ‘levelling’ in the temperature rise over the period 2000 to 2011. This derives in part from the effects of a quasi-periodic component that is modelled and forecast by a Dynamic Harmonic Regression (DHR) relationship and is shown to be correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index.