The euro area is experiencing a severe and highly complex crisis. It comprises three problem areas, the difficulties of some highly indebted European sovereigns to ascertain funding at palatable cost, the disconcerting fragility of the European banking system and disappointing growth prospects...

The extent to which business groups ever existed in the United States and, if they did exist, the reasons for their disappearance are poorly understood. In this paper we use hitherto unexplored historical sources to construct a comprehensive data set to address this issue. We find that (1)...

This paper assesses the effects of applying VAT or a sales tax on (intermediate or final) sales of the financial sector. It uses a CGE Model calibrated for a small open economy. It highlights the differentiated sectoral and redistributional effects of these taxes and shows the importance of the...

This paper is intended to make four main points that are relevant for previously planned economies in transition to a market economy. First, national output can be increased by reducing or eliminating relative price distortions through price reform and free trade and by thus enhancing...

We construct and numerically solve a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model in which the initial distribution of production factors in the world makes worldwide factor price equalization impossible, and leads countries to group in two diversification cones. We study the dynamics of income per capita and...

This Paper reviews the relationship between natural resource dependence and economic growth, and stresses how natural capital intensity tends to crowd out foreign capital, social capital, human capital, physical capital, and financial capital, thereby impeding economic growth across countries....

An unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. Among the sources contributing to such instability, the literature has assigned most of the blame to political issues. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-term relationship between...

Empirical evidence seems to indicate that economic growth since 1965 has varied inversely with natural resource abundance across countries. This Paper proposes a linkage between abundant natural resources and economic growth, through saving and investment. When the share of output that accrues...

Privatization is shown to increase national economic output in a two-sector full-employment general-equilibrium model by enhancing efficiency as if a relative price distortion were being removed through price reform, trade liberalization, or stabilization. The static output gain from...

This paper models technology adoption as replacing workers by machines, which perform the same job in the production process. The paper shows that such modelling of technology adoption affects significantly the analysis of economic growth. This model can explain large and persistent...