There are significant effects of changing demographics on economic indicators: growth in GDP especially, but also the current account balance and gross capital formation. The 15-24 age group appears to be one of the key age groups in these effects, with increases in that age group exerting...

This paper reviews evidence from 44 middle income countries on how the recent financial crisis affected jobs and workers' income. In addition to providing a rare assessment of the magnitude of the impact across several middle-income countries, the paper describes how labor markets adjusted and...

Science rests upon the reliability of peer review. This paper suggests a way to test for bias. It is able to avoid the fallacy - one seen in the popular press and the research literature - that to measure discrimination it is sufficient to study averages within two populations. The paper's...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

This paper is concerned with empirical and theoretical basis of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). The paper begins with an overview of the statistical properties of asset returns at different frequencies (daily, weekly and monthly), and considers the evidence on return predictability, risk...

We provide the first solid evidence that Chinese superstitious beliefs can have significant effects on house prices in a North American market with a large immigrant population. Using real estate data on close to 117,000 house sales, we find that houses with address number ending in four are...

In theory, one of the main benefits of financial globalization is that it should allow for more efficient international risk sharing. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the patterns of risk sharing among different groups of countries and examine how international...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the degree of global cyclical interdependence over the period 1960-2005. We categorize the 106 countries in our sample into three groups - industrial countries, emerging markets, and other developing economies. Using a dynamic factor model, we then decompose...

We review the large literature on various economic policies that could help developing economies effectively manage the process of financial globalization. Our central findings indicate that policies promoting financial sector development, institutional quality and trade openness appear to help...