John Loizides

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN EUROPEAN RAILWAYS: A NEW APPROACH

The paper develops a model to represent the cost structure of European railways based on a general index of technical change, which allows completely general estimation of productivity growth. The estimated model is based on a variable cost function for panel data, which allows for heterogeneity in spite of previous approaches in the railway economics and general index model literature which adopt the assumption of common technical parameters across countries.

Cost structure and productivity growth in European railway systems

The purpose of this paper is threfold: first, to empirically investigate the cost-structure of railway systems in the ten European Countries of the European Union. second to provide measures of economies (diseconomies) of scale and fully investigate the manner by which economies of scale have effected the cost structure of the system and have been affected by the growth in input prices and technology, and third to measure economic efficiency and identify its sources.

The Abrams curve of government size and unemployment: evidence from panel data

This study investigates the long run relationship between government size and unemployment rate, the Abrams curve, using ten European countries over the period 1961–1999. To this end, panel cointegration analysis and estimation techniques appropriate for heterogeneous panels are made use of. The results support the idea that there is an Abrams curve, and the relation between government size and the unemployment rate is positive.

A note on joint estimation of scale economies and productivity growth parameters

Abstract In applied research it is common to estimate complete production models, obtain measures of scale economies and total factor productivity growth and then regress such measures on exogenous variables. Such procedures result in inconsistent estimates of technological as well as regression parameters: estimation of total factor productivity and scale economies in the first step, does not take into account that these measures depend on exogenous variables in the second step. Therefore, their dependence on exogenous variables is not properly taken into account in the first step. The study proposes to estimate jointly the cost function, the share equations as well as total factor productivity and scale economies measures, using full system estimation to account for all the restrictions implied by their endogeneity. The approach is illustrated using data from British, French, and German railways.

Are Greek government deficit and debt statistics reliable

The aim of this paper is to analyze the statistical properties of the Greek government deficit and debt figures compiled and reported to the European Commission since 1994 for the period 1991 to 2012. On the basis of successive revisions in reported data, it assesses the reliability of budgetary statistics and derives a number of reliability indicators. According to the standard deviations of revisions between the first outturn and final data, Greece have reported the least reliable deficit figures and have had the largest dispersion of revisions. The paper has also shown that data on the yearly changes in debt have been less reliable than those on the deficit. Whatever the cause of these findings, we believe that they create problems for users of the data.

Do interest rates predict real economic activity

This paper employs a structural VAR procedure to test some fundamental propositions of the business cycle using a developing economy framework. The focus of the paper is on KBC, MBC and RBC theories as well as on the alternative view, which has been propagated mainly by Sims. The empirical analysis intends to report extensive evidence on the dynamics between money, output, interest rates and prices. The results suggest that the effects of system shocks conform to the alternative view supporting the central role of interest rates. Interest rate shocks explain a majority of the variation in money, output and prices. The results are generally robust across different orderings, alternative interest rate measures and various sample periods.

Electoral Motives, Partisan Motives and Dynamic Optimality with Many Taxes: An International Investigation

In this paper, we argue that tax-smoothing results based on total tax revenues may be of limited importance if in fact governments are concerned with the inter-temporal distortionary effects of many kinds of taxes, when electoral and partisan motives also have to be taken into account. We develop an inter-temporal model that predicts that tax revenue mix should follow random walks. The model is tested with international data using both time series and panel-based unit root tests. We find that during the examined period, 1973-2003, governments are not optimizing tax components in the sense of Barro.