Savings are allocated over the acquisition of assets like homes, shares and bonds and government debt paper. For a home acquisition an individual household uses own equity provided by the buyer and outside equity provided by banks. Such outside equity can help to increase the volume of new...

The world’s financial crisis happened in 2008, but the U.S. individual households’ income and savings crisis happened before that: the latter one was already at crisis point in 2005 and 2006. The key of any analysis about the households’ income and savings crisis should start with the...

The real financial crisis in the U.S. and in other countries did not take place in the banking or the wider financial sector -yes banks and others financial institutions were affected by their own induced excessive lending schemes- but no, it seriously affected the individual households. More...

The relationship between globalization and economic growth in the developing countries remains controversial. Liberals argue that globalization will lead to higher economic growth and prosperity. Skeptics contend the opposite, where globalization processes might lead to increased inequality and...

The current financial crisis followed the “great moderation,” according to which the world’s central banks had gotten so good at countercyclical policy that the business cycle no longer existed. As more and more economists and media people became convinced that the risk of recessions had...

The relationship between globalization and economic growth, especially in the poorer developing countries, is controversial. Many previous studies have used single globalization indicators such as the ratio of exports plus imports to GDP. This paper uses a comprehensive measure of a...

Both theoretical and empirical literature has identified several channels through which FDI influence economic growth in Latin America. This study however examines the impact on economic output growth using aggregate production function augmented with FDI inflows, policy reforms and the...

This paper is the basis for the Guest Columnist article in the Tuesday, November 11, 2008 issue of the Kansas City Star newspaper's Business Weekly. Because of space limitations, the published newspaper column had to be shortened from the original and unfortunately did not include either of the...

This paper explores the disconnect of Federal Reserve data from index number theory. A consequence could have been the decreased systemic-risk misperceptions that contributed to excess risk taking prior to the housing bust. We find that most recessions in the past 50 years were preceded by more...

Both the United States and the United Kingdom publish data on the balance sheet of Households and Non-profit organisations. Eurostat is studying the issue. The time series provide a unique tool to assess whether collectively the individual households are getting richer or poorer. They allow to...