We study the extent of macroeconomic convergence/divergence among euro area countries. Our analysis focuses on four variables (unemployment, inflation, relative prices and the current account), and seeks to uncover the role played by monetary union as a convergence factor by using non-euro...

We study the incentives to improve ability in a model where heterogeneous firms and workers interact in a labor market characterized by matching frictions and costly screening. When effort in improving ability raises both the mean and the variance of the resulting ability distribution, multiple...

Over the past two decades, technological progress in the United States has been biased towards skilled labor. What does this imply for business cycles? We construct a quarterly skill premium from the CPS and use it to identify skill-biased technology shocks in a VAR with long-run restrictions....

This paper presents a tractable dynamic general equilibrium model that can explain cross-country empirical regularities in geographical mobility, unemployment and labor market institutions. Rational agents vote over unemployment insurance (UI), taking the dynamic distortionary effects of...

The integration of developing countries in the world economy during the last three decades has often coincided with increases in the skill premium. These trends are at odds the predictions of the Heckscher-Ohlin trade model where trade opening in skill-scarce developing countries leads to a...

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is constant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coefficients. As rich countries have on average...

We investigate the determinants of regional development using a newly constructed database of 1569 sub-national regions from 110 countries covering 74 percent of the world’s surface and 96 percent of its GDP. We combine the cross-regional analysis of geographic, institutional, cultural, and...

In this paper we compare two historical scenarios very different one to each other both in institutional and geographical terms. What they have in common is the situation of relative poverty of most of the population. On the one side we are dealing with historical industrializing Catalonia in...

Vintage capital growth models have been at the heart of growth theory in the 60s. This research line collapsed in the late 60s with the so-called embodiment controversy and the technical sophistication of the vintage models. This paper analyzes the astonishing revival of this literature in the...

The permanent decline of equipment prices relative to nondurable consumption prices rendered fixed-base quantity indexes obsolete, because of the well-known substitution bias. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) responded by switching to a flexible-base quantity index to measure GDP...