We evaluate the macroeconomic effects of shocks specific to the oil market, which mainly reflect fluctuations in precautionary demand for oil driven by uncertainty about future supplies. A two-stage identification procedure is used. First, daily changes in the futures-spot spread proxy for...

In this paper we study why the misallocation of resources across different productive sectors tends to persist over time. To this end we propose a general equilibrium model that delivers two structural relations. On the one hand, the public expenditure distribution influences the future sectoral...

This paper presents an endogenous growth models with intertemporally dependent preferences and "Ak" technology. We derive sufficient conditions for a balanced growth path to be an equilibrium, provide a full characterization of the equilibrium dynamics of the economy, and explore the...

This paper presents an endogenous growth model with intertemporally dependent preferences and "Ak" technology. We derive sufficient conditions for a balanced growth path to be an equilibrium, provide a full characterization of the equilibrium dynamics of the economy, and explore the implications...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects on the U.S. economy of news about oil supply by estimating a VAR. Information contained in daily quotations of oil futures contracts is exploited to estimate the dynamic path of oil prices following a shock. Hence, differently from the VAR literature...

By allowing median voter�s location and preferred policy to change over time, a variety of redistributive policies results in the long-run with no unique relationship to inequality. Single outcome depends on the interaction between the pure economic structure and policy action in...

The paper analyses the sharp devergence in the nineties between capital formation in the main euro-area countries, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. We have used data from the OECD's International Sectoral Data Base (ISDB), which includes data comparable across a certain...

Tests of parameter instabilities are likely to have low power when change-points occur towards the end of the sample. This paper considers various modifications of existing tests and introduces new statistics designed to have high power in such circumstances. The properties of both Wald-type...

We look at business survey data on Italian internationalized firms’ characteristics and performances since the outbreak of the 2008 crisis until 2012. Among Italian firms with 20 employees or more, an increasing share (from 7.1 to 13.2% between 2006 and 2011) owns a foreign productive unit....

This paper considers the problem of testing for the presence of stochastic trends in multivariate time series with structural breaks. The breakpoints are assumed to be known. The testing framework is the multivariate Locally Best Invariant test and the common trend test of Nyblom and Harvey.