In this paper, we examine whether the business cycle plays a role in marriage and divorce. We use data on Spain, since the differences between recession and expansion periods across regions are quite pronounced in that country. We find that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with the marriage rate, pointing to a procyclical evolution of marriage; however the response of the divorce ...

We find the asymptotic distribution of the OLS estimator of the parameters β and ρ in the mixed spatial model with exogenous regressors Yn = Xnβ + ρWnYn + Vn. The exogenous regressors may be bounded or growing, like polynomial trends. The assumption about the spatial matrix Wn is appropriate for the situation when each economic agent is influenced by many others. The error term is a short-memor...

This paper explores monetary policy decision-making within an insurance model with expected utility-maximizing policy-makers. The authors consider that policy-makers are different in terms of their backgrounds, experience and skills and they may disagree on the appropriate policy response. In a monetary policy committee, they share information and decide on interest rates by means of an agreed ...

Integration is the essence of current research and development (R&D) activity in many organizations. Integration can be established in various ways depending on the type, size and intricacy in organizational functions and products. Nevertheless, research and development (R&D) has become an inevitable function in most manufacturing companies in order to develop their own product niches for their...

Since it has been shown that completeness and constructiveness is an unattainable goal for paretian and anonymous social welfare relations on infinite utility streams, recent contributions generally propose criteria displaying some incomparability. I suggest an interpretation of incomparability which sets a limit to the recourse to the judgment of incomparability when certain intergenerational ...

We examine seller strategies in 1177 Internet auctions on eBay, to understand the diversity of strategies used, and their impacts. Dimensions of strategic choice include the use of a ‘Buy it Now’ option, the level of the starting price, and the use of a secret reserve price. A major focus of our analysis is on differences across sellers with different volumes of sales. The largest volume seller...

The first electronic Economics preprint appeared in 1993. Since then the growth has been dramatic as the use of the World Wide Web has exploded. RePEc has been instrumental in facilitating access to Economics preprints and in bringing order to the chaos that the WWW frequently represents. In a related effort S-WoPEc provides user friendly tools for adding data to the RePEc system. While this is...

This paper examines the impact of transaction costs on economic welfare and development. We extend the static model of Romer (1994), in which transaction costs reduce welfare by the reducing the equilibrium number of intermediate goods, and estimate the welfare losses in the case of domestic transaction costs. The main analysis of the paper extends a dynamic model of Ciccone and Matsuyama (1996...