This paper considers panel growth regressions in the presence of model uncertainty and reverse causality concerns. For this purpose, my econometric framework combines Bayesian Model Averaging with a suitable likelihood function for dynamic panel models with weakly exogenous regressors and fixed...

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the key determinants of economic growth. Some recent cross-country cross-sectional analyses have employed Bayesian Model Averaging to tackle the issue of model uncertainty. This paper extends that approach to panel data models with country-specific fixed...

Global imbalances and financial market (de)regulation both feature prominently among the potential causes of the global financial crisis, but they have been generally discussed separately. In this paper, we take a different angle and investigate the relationship between financial market...

Household debt in many advanced economies has increased significantly since the 1980s and accelerated in the years prior to the Great Recession, resulting in an aggregate reduction of saving rates in the developed economies. Some of those economies are now deleveraging, which may be affecting...

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the main determinants of corporate default. We employ Bayesian model averaging (BMA) techniques in order to shed light on this issue. Empirical findings suggest that the most robust determinants of corporate default are firm-specific variables such as the...

Total Factor Productivity (TFP) accounts for a sizeable proportion of the income and growth differences across countries. Two challenges remain to researchers aiming to explain these differences: on the one hand, TFP growth is hard to measure; on the other hand, model uncertainty hampers...

This paper discusses likelihood-based estimation of linear panel data models with general predetermined variables and individual-specific effects. The resulting (pseudo) maximum likelihood estimator is asymptotically equivalent to standard GMM but tends to have smaller finite-sample biases as...

Model uncertainty remains a challenge to applied researchers in economics. When many competing models are available for estimation and without enough guidance from theory, model averaging represents an alternative to model selection. Despite model averaging approaches have been present in...

We study how estimators used to impute consumption in survey data are inconsistent due to measurement error in consumption. Previous research suggests instrumenting consumption to overcome this problem. We show that, if additional regressors are present, then instrumenting consumption may still...

In this paper we study the evolution of income inequality for employees and self-employed workers. We highlight the importance of separately analyzing these different sources of income to gain a broader understanding of inequality. Using Spanish panel data on income and consumption from the ECPF...