Unlike the federal government, most state governments in the U.S. formally operate under statutory or constitutional constraints which limit their ability to run budget deficits and resort to debt financing. A priori, one would expect to find evidence in favor of an intertemporally balanced budget, or fiscal sustainability, among states, especially those that are characterized by a high degree ...

This paper investigates the dynamics of immigrants’ employment assimilation in comparison with the standard static assimilation model. When the effect of past employment experience on current employment possibilities differs between immigrants and natives, then the static assimilation model might produce biased and unrealistic predictions of the relative employment probabilities of immigrants. ...

The paper considers maximum likelihood estimation of dynamic panel structural equation models with latent variables and fixed effects (DPSEM). This generalises the structural equation methods where latent variables are measured by multiple observable indicators and where structural and measurement models are jointly estimated to dynamic panel models with fixed effects. Analytical expressions fo...

This paper presents new evidence on the determinants of unemployment duration for men and women in Britain in the 1990s, using a nationally representative data set. It examines the impact of individual and local labour market characteristics on the probability of unemployment spells ending with moves into full and part-time employment, self-employment and economic inactivity. The data show that...

This paper examines the relationship between various types of corn research and development (R&D) and corn prices in the United States through a fixed effects panel data model. This research explores R&D investment from both nonprofit and for-profit institutions and the effect these have corn prices. In addition, we look at the effect that corresponding exogenous changes in corn prices have on ...

There is a growing interest, notably in development economics, in extending project evaluation methods to the evaluation of multiple interventions (“programs”). In program evaluations one is interested in the aggregate impact of a program rather than the effect on individual beneficiaries. In many situations randomized controlled trials cannot identify this impact. We propose a measure of progr...

An Evaluation of Public-Sector-Sponsored Continuous Vocational Training Programs in East Germany This study analyses the effects of public-sector-sponsored continuous vocational training and retraining in East Germany after unification with West Germany in 1990. It presents econometric estimates of the average gains from training participation in terms of employment probabilities, earnings, and...

We propose to use the attractiveness of pooling relatively short time series that display similar dynamics, but without restricting to pooling all into one group. We suggest to estimate the appropriate grouping of time series simultaneously along with the group-specific model parameters. We cast estimation into the Bayesian framework and use Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation methods. We discu...