Monetary policy in mainland China differs from conventional central banking in several respects. The central bank regulates retail lending and deposit rates, influences the credit supply via window guidance, and, in recent years has even used the required reserve ratio as a tool for fine-tuning...

With recovery from the global financial crisis in 2009 and 2010, inflation emerged as a major concern for many central banks in emerging Asia. We use data observed at mixed frequencies to estimate the movement of Chinese headline inflation within the framework of a state-space model, and then...

This paper uses panel data for 19 OECD countries and finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...

The objective of this paper is to address the question of convergence across German districts in the first decade after German unification by drawing out and emphasising some stylised facts of regional per capita income dynamics. We achieve this by employing non-parametric techniques which focus...

We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on what makes German regions grow. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal...

This paper analyses the impact of exchange rate uncertainty upon the pattern of investment in different exchange rate regimes (very hard pegs, intermediate regimes, and floats) by means of a unified approach. The comparison of different exchange rate regimes indicates that currency volatility...

In this paper we present two new composite leading indicators of economic activity in Germany estimated using a dynamic factor model with and without regime switching. The obtained optimal inferences of business cycle turning points indicate that the two-state regime switching procedure leads to...

The paper sets up a two-region endogenous growth model to discuss growth and regional convergence of unified Germany. It emphasises the role of private and public capital accumulation during the developing process. The theoretical part derives fiscal policy rules which establish convergence of...

Utilizing panel data for 19 OECD countries we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the US helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from 6-digit OECD export...

In this paper we offer an analysis of the effects of uncertainty about future tax policy on irreversible investment. The main message of the paper is that investment is not much affected by the degreee of tax policy uncertainty. This is true regardless of whether random tax changes are...