This paper considers the estimation of average autoregressive roots-near-unity in panels where the time-series have heterogenous local-to-unity parameters. The pooled estimator is shown to have a potentially severe bias and a robust median based procedure is proposed instead. This median estimator has a small asymptotic bias that can be eliminated almost completely by a bias correction procedur...

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the key determinants of economic growth. Some recent cross-country cross-sectional analyses have employed Bayesian Model Averaging to tackle the issue of model uncertainty. This paper extends that approach to panel data models with countryspecific fixed effects in order to simultaneously address model uncertainty and endogeneity issues. The empirical findi...

Using panel data on investment of firms in energy saving technology, we measure the impact of the payback period of the technology on the probability to adopt the technology in the absence of tax and subsidy incentives. We find that the decision rules to adopt energy saving technology differs substantially between different types of firms, i.e. for-profit/notfor-profit as the decision to adopt ...

The role of human capital composition has been given importance in the most recent endogenous growth models. Assuming that primary as well as secondary education is more suitable for imitation and higher education is more appropriate for innovation, this paper empirically investigates whether the contribution of human capital to productivity growth depends on the composition of human capital an...

Heat waves, defined as an interval of abnormally hot and humid weather, have been a prominent killer in recent years. With heat waves worsening with climate change, adaptation is essential; one strategy has been to issue heat wave warnings and undertake awareness campaigns to bring about behavioral changes to reduce heat stroke. Since 2002, the Indian state of Odisha has been undertaking a gras...

To prevent further increases in energy consumption, the government of Iran commenced energy subsidy reform in 2010. This paper investigates the fuel conservation effects of the reform in Iran using a homothetic translog cost function that provides estimates of the own- and cross-price elasticities of fuel demands. The percentage reduction in fuel demands is estimated using the likely effect of ...

In this paper we construct a modeling for detection of banks which are experiencing serious problems. Sample and variable set of the study contains 30 banks of Iran during 2006-2014 and their financial ratios. Well known multivariate statistical technique (principal component analysis) was used to explore the basic financial characteristics of the banks, and discriminant Logit and Probit models ...

We study the determinants of East–West migration within Germany during the period 1990–2006, using administrative data, the German Microcensus and the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find that in addition to income prospects and employment status, two well-known determinants of migration, psychological and social factors play an important role in determining the migration decision. Men and wome...

This paper documents the extent to which homeowners use housing equity to smooth their consumption over time. Unlike drawing down other forms of saving, accessing accumulated home equity can be quite costly. Theoretically and empirically, a key distinction can be drawn between those refinancing their home mortgage to improve their wealth position from those who had a consumption smoothing motiv...