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This study aims to examine the hysteresis hypothesis in unemployment using monthly data from 13 countries in transition.

Stationarity in the unemployment rate of selected transition economies was analyzed using four different group unit root tests, namely, linear, structural breaks, non-linear and structural breaks and non-linear.

The empirical results show that the unemployment hysteresis hypothesis is valid for the majority of transition economies, including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, the Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. However, the results strongly reject the null hypothesis of unemployment hysteresis for the Kazakhstan and the Slovak Republics.

This study revealed that, for countries in transition, advanced unit root tests exhibit greater validity when compared to standard tests

This study aims to investigate, for the first time in the literature, the stochastic properties of the US aggregate health-care price inflation rate series, using the data on health-care inflation rates for a panel of 17 major US urban areas for the period 1966-2006.

This goal is undertaken by applying the first- and second-generation panel unit root tests and the panel stationary test developed recently by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2005) that allows for endogenously determined multiple structural breaks and is flexible enough to control for the presence of cross-sectional dependence.

The empirical findings indicate that after controlling for the presence of cross-sectional dependence, finite sample bias, and asymptotic normality, the US aggregate health-care price inflation rate series can be characterized as a non-stationary process and not as a regime-wise stationary innovation process.

The research findings apply to understanding of health-care sector price escalation in US urban areas. These findings have timely implications for the understanding of the data structure and, therefore, constructs of economic models of urban health-care price inflation rates. The results confirming the presence of a unit root indicating a high degree of inflationary persistence in the health sector suggests need for further studies on health-care inflation rate persistence using the alternative measures of persistence. This study’s conclusions do not apply to non-urban areas.

The mean and variance of US urban health-care inflation rate are not constant. Therefore, insurers and policy rate setters need good understanding of the interplay of the various factors driving the explosive health-care insurance rates over the large US metropolitan landscape. The study findings have implications for health-care insurance premium rate setting, health-care inflation econometric modeling and forecasting.

Payers (private and public employers) of health-care insurance rates in US urban areas should evaluate the value of benefits received in relation to the skyrocketing rise of health-care insurance premiums.

This is the first empirical research focusing on the shape of urban health-care inflation rates in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the time series behavior of Greek labor market series by providing an empirical perspective on trend breaks and unit roots. Trend breaks represent aggregate behavior responses to “infrequent” changes in economic fundamentals, including changes in fiscal or labor market conditions, as have been perceived in Greece during the last years. Unit roots reveal whether “regular” shocks have significant effects on the level of the series over a specified finite horizon.

The authors employ recent procedures that deal with the “circular testing problem” between tests on the parameters of the trend function and unit root tests that often arises in empirical applications. These techniques assess trend function stability and are robust regardless of whether the noise component is stationary or having a unit root. Then, conditional on the presence of breaks, the authors test whether the series can be characterized by a stochastic trend.

The analysis provides evidence of “infrequent” trend breaks that appear to coincide with the recent global economic crisis and the implementation of the counteraction (fiscal) measures to the Greek debt crisis. Allowing for trend breaks does not lead to a rejection of the unit root hypothesis, which might reflect the low flexibility of the country’s labor market operation.

The procedures employed can be viewed as new tools that might help empirical researchers to explore more accurately the characteristics of individual time series and to find reasonable approximations to the true processes of the time series examined.

The paper provides new information on the presence of structural changes in the Greek labor market, and on whether the “aggressive” and “occasional” nature of fiscal measures can be approximated by infrequent changes in the slope of the trend function.

This paper aims to examine the stochastic convergence of the per capita CO₂ emissions among the top four crude oil exporter countries, namely, Canada, Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia, from 1960 to 2017. Assessing the stationarity and unit root properties of the environmental series in these countries is important as their large fossil fuel resources increases the potential for rising CO₂ emissions compared to other countries.

In addition to implementing the conventional unit root tests, the authors also benefit from the application of three nonlinear unit root tests, namely, wavelet unit root test, nonlinear unit root test of Güriş (2019) and the Fourier quantile unit root test. These methods are robust to the presence of possible structural breaks and other forms of nonlinearities, while the wavelet unit root test enables us to examine the stochastic behavior of the variables in both time and frequency domains. Hence, they all provide more reliable inferences on the convergences of the CO₂ emissions compared to their standard competitors.

The standard unit root test results show strong evidence in favor of non-stationarity in all countries. This conclusion supports the results of the other nonlinear unit root tests and the overall findings of the Fourier quantile unit root test. The wavelet unit root test provides a controversial finding. However, due to its limitations, its findings must be interpreted with caution. The details of the Fourier quantile unit root test indicate that per capita CO₂ emissions follow mean-reverting properties in middle quantile ranges for Canada, Russia and Iraq. This validates the asymmetric behaviors of per capita CO₂ emissions in these countries.

The novelty of the work can be stated in two ways. First, among the available studies, this is the first paper to emphasize the importance of examining the convergence of per capita CO₂ emissions among the top four oil exporters. Second, to the best of the knowledge, no study has yet been undertaken in which all these methods have been simultaneously applied. Sustainable environmental policies depend heavily on the CO₂ series’ properties. Thus, the findings can provide significant environmental and economic implications for policymakers to construct feasible and optimal policies in climate change mitigation.

The paper aims to re‐examine the stationarity properties of unemployment rates in 12 European Union (EU) countries over the period 1988: I‐1999: IV.

This paper applies a battery of second‐generation panel unit root tests that allow for cross‐sectional correlation.

The study shows that, contrary to previous empirical literature, hysteresis does not characterise EU unemployment.

This paper uses recent advances in the econometrics of panel unit root tests. The new tests have more power than the traditional ones in detecting the null hypothesis of a unit root.

The purpose of this paper is to test the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) using monthly data from 2004M08 to 2018M04 for two Canadian stock indices: the Islamic (DJICPI) and the conventional (CCSI). This paper investigates whether Islamic and/or conventional stock market would be efficient through the non-stationarity test of the stock indices.

The authors conduct the linearity test of Harvey et al. (2008) to identify whether the considered series has linear or nonlinear behavior. If the time series exhibits nonlinear evolution, then the authors apply nonlinear unit root tests (three KSS type tests and Sollis tests).

Linearity test results say that LCCSI has nonlinear behavior, while Dow Jones Islamic Canadian Price Index, LDJICPI, is a linear process. Then, the findings of this paper show that only Canadian Islamic Price Index (DJICPI) has the characteristics of random walk indicating that only conventional stock markets are inefficient. The major implication is that in Canada, fund managers and investors can (cannot) enjoy excess returns to their investment in conventional (Islamic) stock market.

Numerous empirical studies of the weak EMH are carried out within a linear framework. However, stock indices can show nonlinear behavior as a result of 2008 global financial crisis. To contribute to the existing literature on the Islamic and conventional stock market efficiency, the authors take into account both structural breaks and nonlinearity. Thus, as a testing strategy for weak EMH, the authors perform (Harvey et al., 2008) linearity test to examine the presence of nonlinear behavior and correct for outliers effect when it is needed.

In this study, we aim to test the stochastic convergence of per capita clean energy use in 30 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries for the period of 1965–2017.

This study employed both linear and nonlinear panel unit root tests, and unlike other studies, this study allowed fractional values in addition to integer values for frequencies in the Fourier functions. Integer values of frequency indicate temporary breaks, while fractional values show permanent breaks.

The results of the linear panel unit root test indicate that clean energy use does not converge to group average for almost all OECD countries. However, the results of nonlinear panel unit root tests provide evidence that the stochastic convergence hypothesis of clean energy consumption cannot be rejected for most countries. This study does not find any evidence for stochastic convergence of clean energy use in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Norway or Sweden. Therefore, the policies regarding clean energy are mandatory in these countries due to their effectiveness. This study also reveals that there are permanent structural breaks in the convergence process of clean energy consumption in approximately half of OECD countries.

This study considers temporary and permanent smooth structural shifts in addition to nonlinearity when testing the stationarity of clean energy consumption in a country i relative to the group average. This new method eliminates deficiencies of the previous panel data techniques. Thus, it provides more reliable results compared to existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for two Southern African countries, namely: Lesotho and Zambia.

The authors utilized four econometric tests to examine the existence of the PPP hypothesis in Lesotho and Zambia. These tests include two unit root tests without structural breaks – the Dickey-Fuller generalized least squares (DF-GLS) test and the Ng-Perron test; and two unit root tests with structural breaks – the Perron test and the Zivot-Andrews test. The authors’ empirical analysis is based on an annual data set with varying time periods. The sample period spanned 1960-2010 and 1955-2010, for Lesotho and Zambia, respectively.

The authors found that the PPP hypothesis was supported in the case of Lesotho, but rejected in the case of Zambia.

This paper is the first to simultaneously explore the exchange rate policies, trends, and the PPP for these two countries. The implication of this finding is that Lesotho is unlikely to profit immensely from trade and investment arbitrages; whereas Zambia is more likely to profit immensely from trade and investment arbitrage by trading with the USA. Moreover, the authors’ findings indicate that the PPP doctrine may be a useful guide for the exchange rate and other macroeconomic adjustment policies in Lesotho but not in Zambia.

This study aims to determine the nexus between agricultural production and agricultural loans for the period Q1 2003–Q4 2018 in Turkey.

The authors employ the time-series analyses within the scope of the study. Firstly, they run the Engle–Granger two-step cointegration test and the Toda–Yamamoto causality analysis. They also use the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) model estimator and estimate the vector autoregression model for predicting the dynamic structure of time series.

The results of time series analyses reveal that the variables are cointegrated and there are causal relationships between agricultural loans and agricultural production. Also, the variance decomposition findings indicate that the effect of agricultural loans provided by development-investment banks and participation banks on agricultural production has increased over the years, and the deposit banks have a high impact on agricultural production. The results of the DOLS model indicate that agricultural loans have a positive effect on agricultural production.

This research is one of the few studies that comprehensively determines the direction of nexus between agricultural production and agricultural loans in Turkey economy. This is the first contribution of the study in the literature. Another contribution of this study is to investigate the nexus between agricultural production and agricultural loans for banking sector groups. Unlike other studies in the literature, this study calculates the variance decomposition by going beyond unit root and cointegration tests. Thus, this study has deep findings.

The purpose of this paper is to use quarterly time series data from Canada and the Canadian provinces to determine if the unemployment rates in the Canadian provinces are converging to the national rate of unemployment.

First, the authors check for existence of stochastic convergence using recent unit root statistics, see Perron and Rodríguez (2003) and Rodríguez (2007). Second, the authors verify existence of convergence using methods proposed by Volgelsang (1998) and Bai and Perron (1998, 2003). All these methods allows for structural break(s) in the data.

Results from different unit root tests, without and with structural breaks, confirm that stochastic convergence exists in all provinces. The other results show strong evidence that deterministic convergence exists and the unemployment rates of the Canadian provinces are converging to the unemployment rate of Canada. This conclusion is stronger when multiple breaks are allowed in the trend function using the approach of Bai and Perron (1998, 2003).

Since the authors have verified the existence of stochastic convergence, any intervention in the labor markets of the Canadian provinces to control the provincial unemployment rate would have a temporary effect and these policies will not have a permanent influence on the unemployment rates. However, existence of β-convergence in the Canadian provinces shows that general policies toward lowering the national unemployment rate would decrease the provincial unemployment rates as well.

To the best of the knowledge, the paper attempts to study the unemployment rate convergence in the Canadian provinces using the above-mentioned approaches. These approaches allow the authors to take into consideration the possibility of structural breaks in order to get results that are more accurate.