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This study uses parametric hazard models to investigate duration dependence in US stock market cycles over the January 1929 through December 1992 period. Market cycles are determined using the Beveridge‐Nelson (1981) approach to the decomposition of economic time series. The results show that both real and nominal cycles exhibit positive duration dependence. The implication of this finding is that actual prices revert to their permanent or trend level in a non‐random manner as the cyclical component dissipates over time. This process is consistent with mean reversion in price and suggests that predictable periodicity in market cycles may exist. Only limited evidence is obtained that discrete shifts or trends in mean cycle duration exist. The length of market cycles appears not to have changed over the 1929–92 period.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the presence of rational speculative bubbles in the Malaysian stock market in light of contradictory results presented in previous studies.

The authors use descriptive statistics, explosiveness tests and the duration dependence test. They use an expanded data set that encompasses at least two alleged bubble episodes addressing a significant limitation of previous studies. The authors use both monthly and weekly returns addressing concerns about the sensitivity of duration dependence test results to the use of monthly versus weekly returns, as well as a battery of alternative measures of returns.

The authors detect bubble footprints but they do not appear to be rational. They found no evidence of rational speculative bubbles over the sample period regardless of whether monthly or weekly returns was used. The authors suggest that if there were bubbles in the Malaysian stock market, they might have been caused by irrational investor behaviour. The authors’ results do not support the suggestion that the duration dependence test is sensitive to the use of monthly versus weekly returns.

Despite the absence of rational bubbles in the Malaysian stock market, the faint bubble footprints detected still suggest caution for investors, as the authors cannot categorically rule out the presence of irrational bubbles.

This paper clarifies conflicting results of previous studies. It also contributes to the literature on bubble testing by presenting new evidence from an emerging market refuting the claim that duration dependence test results are sensitive to the use of either weekly or monthly returns.

There is a long period from completing studies to finding a permanent or temporary (but at least satisfactory) job in all European countries, especially in Mediterranean countries, including Italy. This paper aims to study the determinants of this duration and measure them, for the first time in a systematic way, in the case of Italy.

This paper provides several measures of duration, including education level and other criteria. Furthermore, it attempts to identify the main determinants of the long Italian transition, both at a macroeconomic and an individual level. It tests for omitted heterogeneity of those who are stuck at this important crossroads in their life within the context of parametric survival models.

The average duration of the school-to-work transition for young people aged 18–34 years was 2.88 years (or 34.56 months) in 2017. A shorter duration was found for the highly educated; they found a job on average 46 months earlier than those with compulsory education. At a macroeconomic level, the duration over the years 2004–2017 was inversely related to spending in the labour market policy and in education, gross domestic product growth and the degree of trade union density; however, it was directly related to the proportion of temporary contracts. At the individual level, being a woman, a migrant or living in a densely populated area in the South are the risk factors for remaining stuck in the transition. After correcting for omitted heterogeneity, there is clear evidence of positive duration dependence.

Positive duration dependence suggests that focusing on education and labour policy, rather than labour flexibility, is the best way to smooth the transition.

This study develops our understanding of the Italian school-to-work transition regime by providing new and detailed evidence of its duration and by studying its determinants.

This paper analyses the collapse of credit booms into soft landings or systemic banking crises.

A discrete-time competing risks duration model is employed to disentangle the factors behind the length of benign and harmful credit booms.

The results show that economic growth and monetary authorities play the major role in explaining the differences in the length and outcome of credit booms. Moreover, both types of credit expansions display positive duration dependence, i.e. both are more likely to end as they grow older, but hard landing credit booms have proven to be longer than those that land softly.

This paper contributes to our understanding of what affects the length of credit booms and why some end up creating havoc and others do not. In particular, it calls the attention to the important role that Central Bank independence plays regarding credit booms length and outcome.

The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison to the other EU countries. We analyze its determinants comparing the Italian case with Austria, Poland and the UK.

The analysis is based on a Cox survival model with proportional hazard. The smoothed hazard estimates allow us to identify the nonlinear path of the hazard function.

The authors reckon that the actual length of the transition to a stable job is around 30 months in Italy. Conversely, it is less than one year in the other countries. Women are particularly penalized, despite being on average more educated than men. Tertiary or vocational education at high secondary school strongly increases the hazard rate to a regular job. The smoothed hazard estimates suggest positive duration dependence at the beginning of the transition and slightly negative thereafter.

Stimulating economic growth and investing in education and training are important pre-conditions for shortening the transition.

Despite the duration of the STWT is one of the most important indicators to measure the efficiency of the STWT, it is not easy to measure. The authors build on their previous research work on this topic, but relaxing the assumption of a monotonic hazard rate and using the flexible baseline hazard approach to test for the existence of nonlinear duration dependence. Furthermore, they extend the analysis by including student-workers who attended a vocational path of education, in order to detect its effectiveness in allowing young people finding a job sooner.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding low pay dynamics of Australian employees, with a focus on the determination of low pay duration.

The study draws on a representative longitudinal survey of Australian households to provide empirical findings from both descriptive analysis and econometric modelling.

The results show that workers who have entered low pay from higher pay also have a higher hazard rate of transitioning to higher pay; and those who have entered low pay from non-employment are more likely to return to non-employment. Union members, public sector jobs and working in medium to large size firms tend to increase the hazard rate of transitioning to higher pay, while immigrants from non-English speaking countries and workers with health problems have a lower hazard rate of moving into higher pay. There is some evidence that the longer a worker is on low pay, the less likely he or she is to transition to higher pay.

This study addresses an information gap regarding the determination of low pay duration. The findings help identify workers who are at high risk of staying on low pay or transitioning into non-employment and are therefore informative for developing targeted policy to help the low paid maintain employment and/or move up the earnings ladder. The results also suggest that policy intervention should take place at an early stage of a low pay spell.

We tested for evidence of stock price bubbles in the Malaysian stock market from 1978 to 2004. Four different tests were used namely excess volatility tests, unit root/co-integration tests, duration dependence tests, and the intrinsic bubbles model. All four tests indicate that during the sample period, there was evidence of stock price bubbles. All tests results conform to the theoretical literature on asset price bubbles except for the results on the intrinsic bubbles model, which concludes that Malaysian investors under react to information on dividends. We find this result hardly surprising as anecdotal evidence does indicate that Malaysian investors place more importance on capital gains as compared to dividends. Although we do not go into a debate on whether authorities should be prick the bubble to stem its negative effects, we argue that transparent information dissemination will ensure that the stock market becomes more efficient in pricing stocks.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse recruitment to sheltered employment for the disabled, with particular attention to cream skimming, i.e. whether the most able candidates are picked by programme organisers.

In this paper recruitment practices and incentive structures at the state‐owned Samhall company, Sweden's main provider of sheltered employment, are discussed. An econometric analysis is performed on a random sample of 10,000 unemployed individuals, exploring the quality of the data on disability and the determinants of recruitment to the company. The findings regarding recruitment are related to Samhall's objectives.

The findings in this paper regarding cream skimming is mixed; the prioritised groups, i.e. individuals with intellectual or psychic disabilities, are more likely to be hired than some, but not all, disability groups. Individuals without disabilities tend to be recruited by the company, which suggests creaming and is contrary to the guidelines.

The paper sees that the fact that disability tends to be difficult to define should be taken into account when recruitment practices to employment programmes for the disabled are analysed.

The paper found that objectives and screening procedures in employment programmes for the disabled should be assessed carefully in order to avoid excessive cream skimming.

The paper shows that most studies on cream skimming do not consider programmes for the disabled, although the potential for harmful cream skimming may be larger than in mainstream programmes. Unlike previous studies the role of disability characteristics for recruitment is explicitly taken into account and these are related to programme objectives.

This study analyzes empirically the extent to which women’s employment affects the duration of first birth intervals among married women in Taiwan during the rapidly growing period. By employing the data from the 1989 Taiwan Women and Family Survey, our estimation results suggest that women’s employment strongly affects the duration of first birth intervals, and that various aspects of women’s employment affect first birth intervals differently. In terms of the number of working hours, women who work more than 30 hours per week tend to have an earlier first birth. On the other hand, work experience, as indicated by women’s labor force participation surrounding the first birth as well as their job tenure, is found to positively affect women’s first birth intervals. When the model is estimated on the basis of age cohorts, these implications remain the same. Given that the impact of labor market experiences and working hours act in opposite directions on the first birth interval, their effects may offset each other. Therefore, our findings provide an explanation to the earlier research result, which indicates that female employment is only weakly related to fertility behavior in Taiwan.