This paper describes the provision of a feasibility study for the development of a county leisure information service for a shire county in England, and discusses how the…
Abstract
This paper describes the provision of a feasibility study for the development of a county leisure information service for a shire county in England, and discusses how the structural and political issues that arise are likely to be generic to any service of this type. Analysis is given of the current provision of leisure and tourist information systems, both on traditional forms of media and on the World Wide Web. A solution is proposed that enables the Local Authority and other information providers to avoid unnecessary duplication of existing databases. The argument is developed that existing leisure services must become integrated with Web developments if they are to reach potential customers, who are defined as belonging to two separate categories — county residents and visitors. Recommendations are made that would enable the target audience to be reached by establishing a Leisure Information Web System to reach audiences who maybe anywhere on the Net; and to develop Web kiosks, for use in public places, which may operate offline. The paper also discusses the possible managerial and financial implications of running this service.
The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, is growing at a remarkable rate. It is already a significant channel for information distribution and looks set to become a…
Abstract
The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, is growing at a remarkable rate. It is already a significant channel for information distribution and looks set to become a universal medium. A demonstration of how a local newspaper might use this medium was developed for inclusion in a seminar, taking advantage of the fact that most local newspapers already use electronic means of text and graphic manipulation in their production. This paper describes the process from the point at which articles and graphics were supplied electronically by the UK's Loughborough Echo through to their inclusion in Web pages, and their eventual display via a Web browser to readers on the Internet. It looks critically at how this process might be embedded in the normal production of a local newspaper and discusses the likely content, readership, publishers' motivation and the future of such a process.
The different types of estimators of rational expectations modelsare surveyed. A key feature is that the model′s solution has to be takeninto account when it is estimated. The two…
Abstract
The different types of estimators of rational expectations models are surveyed. A key feature is that the model′s solution has to be taken into account when it is estimated. The two ways of doing this, the substitution and errors‐in‐variables methods, give rise to different estimators. In the former case, a generalised least‐squares or maximum‐likelihood type estimator generally gives consistent and efficient estimates. In the latter case, a generalised instrumental variable (GIV) type estimator is needed. Because the substitution method involves more complicated restrictions and because it resolves the solution indeterminacy in a more arbitary fashion, when there are forward‐looking expectations, the errors‐in‐variables solution with the GIV estimator is the recommended combination.
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This article reviews the literature on the econometric relationship between DSGE and VAR models from the point of view of estimation and model validation. The mapping between DSGE…
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This article reviews the literature on the econometric relationship between DSGE and VAR models from the point of view of estimation and model validation. The mapping between DSGE and VAR models is broken down into three stages: (1) from DSGE to state-space model; (2) from state-space model to VAR(
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Fabio Canova and Matteo Ciccarelli
This article provides an overview of the panel vector autoregressive models (VAR) used in macroeconomics and finance to study the dynamic relationships between heterogeneous…
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This article provides an overview of the panel vector autoregressive models (VAR) used in macroeconomics and finance to study the dynamic relationships between heterogeneous assets, households, firms, sectors, and countries. We discuss what their distinctive features are, what they are used for, and how they can be derived from economic theory. We also describe how they are estimated and how shock identification is performed. We compare panel VAR models to other approaches used in the literature to estimate dynamic models involving heterogeneous units. Finally, we show how structural time variation can be dealt with.
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Laura Liu, Christian Matthes and Katerina Petrova
In this chapter, the authors ask two questions: (i) Is the conduct of monetary policy stable across time and similar across major economies? and (ii) Do policy decisions of major…
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In this chapter, the authors ask two questions: (i) Is the conduct of monetary policy stable across time and similar across major economies? and (ii) Do policy decisions of major central banks have international spillover effects? To address these questions, the authors build on recent semi-parametric advances in time-varying parameter models that allow us to increase the vector autoregressive () dimension and to jointly model three advanced economies (USA, UK and the Euro Area). The main reduced-form finding of this chapter is an increased connectedness between and within countries during the recent financial crisis. In order to study policy spillovers, we jointly identify three economy-specific monetary policy shocks using a combination of sign and magnitude restrictions. The authors find that monetary policy shocks were larger in magnitude and more persistent in the early 1980s than in subsequent periods. The authors also uncover positive spillover effects of policy between countries in the 1980s and diminished, and sometimes negative ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ effects in the second half of the sample. Moreover, during the 1980s, the authors find evidence for policy coordination between the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank.
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In the last decade, Argentina has experienced a considerable decline in informal employment and wage dispersion. This paper extends a search model with exogenous human capital…
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In the last decade, Argentina has experienced a considerable decline in informal employment and wage dispersion. This paper extends a search model with exogenous human capital accumulation to include the informal sector. The model is parametrized to match Argentinian data between 1996 and 1998 – before the onset of the declining trend – and it is used to investigate the contribution of labor market measures to the falling informality, unemployment, and wage dispersion. The findings indicate that institutional factors did not contribute to the positive labor market trends observed; on the contrary, results show that higher severance pay and minimum wages increase informality and that the introduction of unemployment assistance contributed to the spread of informal contracts across the work force. Further, I find that compliance with minimum wage regulation strongly affects the final impact of these policies. While non perfect compliance might reduce unemployment, it reinforces the incentives of workers to move to the informal sector.
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Federico Echenique and Ivana Komunjer
In this article we design an econometric test for monotone comparative statics (MCS) often found in models with multiple equilibria. Our test exploits the observable implications…
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In this article we design an econometric test for monotone comparative statics (MCS) often found in models with multiple equilibria. Our test exploits the observable implications of the MCS prediction: that the extreme (high and low) conditiona l quantiles of the dependent variable increase monotonically with the explanatory variable. The main contribution of the article is to derive a likelihood-ratio test, which to the best of our knowledge is the first econometric test of MCS proposed in the literature. The test is an asymptotic “chi-bar squared” test for order restrictions on intermediate conditional quantiles. The key features of our approach are: (1) we do not need to estimate the underlying nonparametric model relating the dependent and explanatory variables to the latent disturbances; (2) we make few assumptions on the cardinality, location, or probabilities over equilibria. In particular, one can implement our test without assuming an equilibrium selection rule.