We consider one polluting industry in an open economy. The national government implements a policy of industrial pollution control by inducing appropriate technological innovations to reduce toxic emissions. The emission-reducing innovations are developed through firm-specific costly...

Anti-trust problems affecting markets for intermediate goods or services raise the input costs of firms operating in downstream sectors, which often face tough international competition. Such firms lose market share, thus worsening the economic performance of the country. We try to document the...

In response to the financial crisis of 2007-2010, many central banks are getting involved in macroprudential supervision. Central bank communication will constitute a central policy tool for that purpose. The paper asks how such communication will affect financial markets, exploiting the fact...

This paper provides a direct test of the causal link from electoral rules to economic policy. Our theoretical model delivers unambigous predictions on the interaction between institutions and a time varying event, namely the unemployment rate in pivotal and non-pivotal districts. We use local...

We consider inflation and government debt dynamics when monetary policy employs a global interest rate rule and private agents forecast using adaptive learning. Because of the zero lower bound on interest rates, active interest rate rules are known to imply the existence of a second, low...

This paper describes a simple model of technology adoption which combines the two engines of growth emphasized in the recent growth literature: human capital accumulation and technological progress. Our model economy does not create new technologies, it simply adopts those that have been created...

Economic growth in Denmark in the post-war years has been close to the OECD average. The `golden age' of very high growth was, however, of shorter duration in Denmark than in most other OECD countries. The main emphasis in this paper is on the description of productivity performance in the...

Sweden is home to a remarkably large number of prosperous multinationals. We argue that this is partly the result of industrial policies that have been biased in favour of large firms, and partly the result of an institutional setting where regulations and controls have facilitated investment...

We propose an index of the fiscal stance that is convenient for practical use. It is based on a finite time horizon, not on an infinite time horizon like most tests. As it employs VAR analysis it is simple to compute and easily automated. We also show how it is possible to analyse a change of...