In this paper we propose a novel nonlinear model to capture asymmetries in real estate cycles. The approach involves a particular parametrization of the transition function used in the transition equation of a smooth transition autoregressive model which improves the fit in the non-central probability region. The dynamic symmetry in house price cycles is strongly rejected for the housing markets taken into consideration. Further, our results show that the proposed model performs well in a out of sample forecasting exercise.

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This article evaluates the effectiveness of the 'hard' policy implemented by the Governments (labelled mrNBI by Authors) of eight Countries during the first wave of the COVID contagion spread and concludes that these policies had a negligible effect if compared to other, less restrictive ones (labelled lrNPI by Authors).A series of mistakes and imprecisions in the methodology cannot be ignored. I am going to illustrate them.

This paper examines the relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Italy considering the developments in a 150-year time span. Using several statistical techniques, we find that GDP growth and carbon dioxide emissions are strongly interrelated, with a dramatic change of the elasticity of pollutant emissions with respect to output. Our findings highlight lack of structural change in the reduction of the carbon dioxide, suggesting the difficulties for Italy to meet the emissions targets within the Europe 2020 strategy.

We are happy to respond to Bendavid et al. on the matter of their paper [1] (the authors, henceforth). Given the subject matter impacts on lives across the globe, we are pleased to have the opportunity to continue this worthwhile discussion. While the authors have written a response [2] to our initial concerns [3,4,5], we feel that it falls short in a number of key ways, and thus the paper still does not propose a useful assessment of the efficacy of Non‐Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) against COVID‐19.