In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of pandemics on commodity price volatility. In specific, we explore the impact of economic uncertainty related to global pandemics on the volatility of the S&P GSCI commodity index as well as on the sub-indexes of crude oil and gold. The results show that uncertainty related to pandemics have a strong negative impact on the volatility of commodity markets and especially on crude oil market, while the effect on gold market is positive but less significant. Our findings remain robust to a series of robustness checks.

In this paper, we empirically examine the impact of uncertainty shocks on the volatility of commodity prices. Using several alternative measures of economic uncertainty for the U.S., we estimate their effects on commodity price volatility through VAR analysis. We find that the latent uncertainty shocks have the most significant impact on commodity price volatility when compared to observable measures of economic uncertainty. In specific, our results show that the unobservable economic uncertainty measures of Jurado et al. (2015) have a significant and long-lasting positive effect on the volatility of commodity prices. Our findings indicate that a positive shock in unobservable macroeconomic and financial uncertainty leads to a persistent increase in the volatility of the broad commodity market index and of individual commodity prices, with the macroeconomic effect being more significant. Finally, we show that the impact is stronger in energy commodities compared to agricultural and metals markets.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the nature of Greek regional unemployment. The paper contributes to the literature assessing the stochastic properties of Greek unemployment rate in the context of the Greek regions by relying on various univariate and panel unit root tests. In particular, recently developed and more powerful panel unit-root tests that control for structural breaks, heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence in the panel are employed. The results show that in all cases, after taking into account the fact that regional unemployment rates in Greece are subject to a structural break, the null hypothesis of a unit root is not rejected, indicating that the Greek regional unemployment series are non-stationary with the presence of a structural break.

Culture is considered as one of the most powerful forces that shape human behaviour and thereby economic activity. This paper investigates the effects of culture on labour productivity and examines the cultural traits driving this relationship. Using panel data analysis, empirical evidence is provided covering a sample of 34 OECD countries over a wide period of three decades. Our empirical results suggest a significant positive relationship between the cultural background and labour productivity. The main channels of this positive impact are control and work ethic environment, while obedience has a negative impact on productivity. These findings are robust to a series of robustness checks, including alternative cultural measures, additional control variables, various country samples, and alternative specifications.

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Copyright belongs to the author. Short sections of the text, not exceeding three paragraphs, can be used provided proper acknowledgement is given. The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA) was established in March 2007. RCEA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to independent research in Applied and Theoretical Economics and related fields. RCEA organizes seminars and workshops, sponsors a general interest journal, the Review of Economic Analysis (REA), and organizes a biennial conference, the Rimini Conference in Economics and Finance (RCEF). Scientific work contributed by the RCEA Scholars is published in the RCEA Working Paper series. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors. No responsibility for them should be attributed to the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.

Conflicting theoretical models and diverse empirical evidence characterize research analysing the relationship between business cycle volatility and economic growth. While the average reported effect of volatility on growth is negative, the empirical estimates vary substantially across studies. We identify the factors that explain this heterogeneity in estimates by conducting a meta-analysis. Our evidence suggests that researchers’ choices regarding the measure of volatility, the control set of the estimated equation, the estimation methods, and the data characteristics can all explain the differences in the reported estimates. Finally, the literature is found to be free of publication bias.

This paper applies panel unit-root tests that allow for structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence to examine the validity of hysteresis in gender unemployment rates and gender unemployment gap for a panel of 15 European countries. Addressing breaks, there is evidence to reject the null hypothesis of hysteresis for the unemployment rates and unemployment gap series. Allowing for both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneous structural breaks this result is reverted and we fail to reject the null hypothesis of unit root.