These studies are based on information on time use in nine countries. Such studies will become more common as more governments fund time-budget surveys and as economists realize the benefits of using this type of data. Each does something that either could not have been accomplished at all, or that could have been done much less convincingly on the data that one typically obtains from households. Part I deals with the "when?" and "with whom?" questions describing human behavior. These questions have been essentially ignored by social scientists generally, and have been completely ignored by...

The goal of this edited volume is to take a hard, objective look at the many different aspects of taxing the hard-to-tax, as well as the many different approaches that have been employed around the world. In the developed and developing world, taxing certain kinds of activities, sectors, or individuals - the so-called "hard-to-tax" - is a challenge for governments. In the past, the practical side of this issue has received some attention, mainly from those working in the trenches of tax administration. There has also been some analytical work on such things as "presumptive" taxation, as well...

This volume collects the papers from a conference in honor of J. Michael Finger on the occasion of his retirement from the World Bank. The papers cover a number of important issues in the analysis of policy reform and the political economy of policy reform. In particular, papers focus on the political economy of trade liberalization, the role of international agencies in policy reform, policy learning, and the application of economic analysis in policy reform.

The business cycle has long been the focus of empirical economic research. Until recently statistical analysis of macroeconomic fluctuations was dominated by linear time series methods. Over the past 15 years, however, economists have increasingly applied tractable parametric nonlinear time series models to business cycle data; most prominent in this set of models are the classes of Threshold AutoRegressive (TAR) models, Markov-Switching AutoRegressive (MSAR) models, and Smooth Transition AutoRegressive (STAR) models. In doing so, several important questions have been addressed in the...

The present volume provides a collection of material on the subject of international comparisons, contributed by scholars from a range of relevant disciplines and geographical backgrounds. The papers in this volume have been classified into two broad groups united by overlapping themes. Part I includes essentially empirical papers intended to provide a clear picture of the different types of international comparisons that have been undertaken by various organizations and individuals. The papers relate to empirical studies of different sectoral and national income aggregates at both regional...

Motivated by recent events and experiences in antitrust enforcement and policy in the United States and the European Union, and new insights and findings from academic research, this book presents a collection of theoretical, empirical and public policy-oriented articles representing recent research on the political-economy of antitrust. Political-economy is defined broadly to include the demand-side drivers of antitrust activity such as market failures and interest-groups, along with supply-side drivers including ideology and partisan politics as well as the importance of informational...

A discussion of various aspects of dynamic behavior of empirical macroeconomic, and in particular, macroeconometric models, is presented in this book. The book addresses in depth several theoretical and practical aspects concerning the modeling and analysis of long-run equilibrium behavior, adjustment dynamics and stability. Tools are developed to identify and interpret the main determinants of the dynamics of models. The tools involve, among others, error-correction mechanisms, eigenvalue analysis, feedback closure rules, graph theory, learning behavior, steady-state analysis, and stochastic...

The contributions in this volume, by leading economists from major universities in Europe and USA, cover research at the front line of econometric analysis and labour market applications. The volume includes several papers on equilibrium search models (a relatively new field), and job matching, both seen from a theoretical and from an applied point of view. Methods on and empirical analyses of unemployment durations are also discussed. Finally, a large group of papers examine the structure and the dynamics of the labour market in a number of countries using panel data. This group includes...

Economics, Econometrics and The LINK" is a collection of scholarly contributions by leading scholars from the U.S., Europe, and Asia dealing with issues of economics and econometrics. The book contains a learned and erudite exposition of macroeconomics and macroeconomic modeling including national, sectoral, issues exchange rate, environment, international price competitiveness and international linkages. It presents a comprehensive perspective of econometric modeling - country-specific, sector-specific and issue-specific. The volume is a tribute to the work of Lawrence R. Klein from all his...

Microsimulation models provide an exciting new tool for analysing the distributional impact and cost of government policy changes. They can also be used to analyse the current or future structure of society. This volume contains papers describing new developments at the frontiers of microsimulation modelling, and draws upon experiences in a wide range of countries. Some papers aim to share with other modellers, experience gained in designing and running microsimulation models and their use in government policy formulation. They also examine issues at the frontiers of the discipline, such as...