We investigate the impact of changes in international trade and domestic transport costs on the internalgeography of a domestic economy linked to the rest of the World through a hub. We address that issue bydeveloping two three regions model, namely a version of the Footlose Entrepreneur and a...

This paper analyzes the cyclical properties of worker flows in Brazil and Mexico, two important developing countries with large unregulated or "informal" sectors. It generates three stylized facts that are critical to the accurate modeling of the sector and which suggest the need to rethink the...

The paper investigates the impact of ownership concentration on GDP growth, for a sample of 18 OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2004. The econometric analysis shows that more concentrated ownership can speed up growth, for countries approaching the technological frontier, provided that...

Existing research examining the self-selection of immigrants suffers from a lack ofinformation on the immigrants´ labor force activities in the home country, quotas limiting whois allowed to enter the destination country, and non-economic factors such as internal civilstrife in the home...

Individuals and business owners engage in an increasingly complex array of financialdecisions that are critical for their success and well-being. Yet a growing literature documentsthat in both developed and developing countries, a large fraction of the population is unpreparedto make these...

Recent research has demonstrated that while government expenditures are countercyclical inmost industrialized countries, they tend to be procyclical in developing countries. We develop adynamic political economy model to explain this phenomenon. In the model, public expendituresprovide insurance...

Utilizing a new database of tax rates, tax revenues and tax income-elasticities we contribute to the debate on the effects of …fiscal policyon economic activity in a number of ways. First, using both panelGMM and panel VAR methods, we …find that the effects of tax cuts onGDP growth are...

A large empirical literature claims that …fiscal policy in developingcountries is procyclical, in contrast to high-income countries where it is countercyclical. Some authors, however, have questioned this …finding because theliterature has typically ignored endogeneity problems. To settle this...

Die Weltlandwirtschaft ist durch vielfältige staatliche Markteingriffe geprägt. In reichen Ländern sind die Erzeugerpreise meist über dem Weltmarktniveau gehalten worden, während die Regierungen der armen Länder dazu tendieren, die Nahrungsgüterpreise unterhalb des Marktpreises...

Die Agrar- und Ernährungsorganisation der Vereinten Nationen (FAO) hat jüngst die Öffentlichkeit alarmiert, weil die Reduzierung des auf dem Welternährungsgipfel 1996 formu-lierten ambitiösen Ziels, die Anzahl der mangelernährten Menschen auf der Welt zu halbieren, in sehr weite Ferne...