Not so much and we should not, at least not yet.

This paper shows that the explanation of the decline in the volatility of GDP growth since the mid-eighties is not the decline in the volatility of exogenous shocks but rather a change in their propagation mechanism.

Global financial integration unlocks a huge potential for international risk sharing. We examine the degree to which international equity holdings act as a risk sharing device in industrial and emerging economies. We split equity returns into investment income (dividend distribution) and capital...

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries’ business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

We investigate the effect of higher education on the evolution of inequality. In so doing we propose a novel overlapping generations model with three social classes: the rich, the middle class, and the poor. We show that there is an initial phase in which no social class invests in higher...

In the euro area, there is mixed evidence that the GDP per capita of lower-income economies has been catching up with that of higher-income economies since the start of monetary union. The significant real convergence performance of some of the most recent members contrasts with that of the...

We propose a novel framework to analyse the macroeconomic impact of non-communicable diseases. We incorporate measures of disease prevalence into a human capital augmented production function, which enables us to determine the economic costs of chronic health conditions in terms of foregone...

We study the effects of a labor-intensive health care sector within an R&D-driven growth model with overlapping generations. Health care increases longevity and labor participation/productivity. We examine under which conditions expanding health care enhances growth and welfare. Even if the...