Following the present atmosphere of budgetary cuts we analyze the effects of fiscal consolidation on the composition of government expenditures by functions. Using a dynamic voter group decision model and exploiting the panel structure of the dataset – 26 OECD countries over the period 1970-1997by GMM estimation we find that fiscal adjustments protect social expenditure. Nevertheless, we find t...

In models with potential weak identification researchers often decide whether to report a robust confidence set based on an initial assessment of model identification. Two-step procedures of this sort can generate large coverage distortions for reported confidence sets, and existing procedures for controlling these distortions are quite limited. This paper introduces a generally-applicable appr...

Social sanctions may be a strong deterrent of crime. This paper presents a formal model that relates crime and social sanction to social interaction density. We empirically test the theoretical predictions using a provincial level panel dataset on different crimes in Italy between 1996 and 2003. We exploit detailed demographic and geo-morphological information to develop exogenous measures of s...

We study a key part of NHS policy to ensure high quality health care: failure to supply such care cost the NHS £787m in clinical negligence payouts during 2009-10. The NHS uses risk management standards to incentivise care and we examine their effects on MRSA infections. Using a specially assembled dataset, our GMM results suggest that improvements in the risk management standards attained by s...

This paper examines the impact of anticipated and unanticipated monetary policy announcements, of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee on UK sectoral stock returns. The monetary policy shock is generated from the change in the three-month sterling LIBOR futures contract. Using a panel GMM estimator we find that both the expected and unexpected components of monetary changes are signi...

Banking sector openness may directly increase growth by improving the quality of financial services and increasing funds available, or indirectly by improving the efficiency of financial intermediaries, both of which may reduce the cost of financing, in turn, increase capital accumulation and economic growth. The objective of the paper is to empirically reinvestigate these direct and indirect l...

Macroeconomic Effects of Short-Term Training Measures on the Matching Process in Western Germany This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of short term training measures on the matching processes in West Germany. The empirical analysis is based on regional data for local employment office districts for the period from January 2003 to December 2004. The empirical model relies on a dynam...

The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) has been widely used in pattern recognition problems for clustering and probability density estimation. For pattern classification, however, the GMM has to consider two issues: model structure in high-dimensional space and discriminative training for optimizing the decision boundary. In this paper, we propose a classification method using subspace GMM density mo...

This paper quantifies the contribution of technology gaps to international income inequality. I develop an endogenous growth model where cross-country differences in R&D efficiency and cross-industry innovation adoption opportunities together determine equilibrium gaps, trade patterns, Countries with higher are richer have comparative advantage more innovation-dependent industries. calibrat...

capital market is one of the most important sectors of every economy. economic growth can lead to capital market boom and development, on the other hand, achieving desired economic growth and development is impossible without efficient financial institution and suitable funding resources. in this study the relationship between financial development and economic growth in opec countries and non-...