We look for a theoretical justification of nominal wage contracts in household diversification of risk. We assume it is more costly for households than for firms to use financial markets for this purpose. In a calibrated general equilibrium model we find from stochastic simulation that where...

We examine the view that high-quality macroeconomic policy is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for economic growth. We first construct a new index of the quality of macroeconomic policy. We then directly compare growth rate distributions across countries with good and bad policies; use...

How large are spatial barriers to transferring knowledge? We analyze the international operations of multinational firms to answer this fundamental question. In our model firms can transfer bits of knowledge to their foreign a¢ liates in either embodied (traded intermediates) or disembodied...

This Paper examines the importance of agglomeration economies and institutions vis-à-vis initial conditions and factor endowments in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors. Using a unique panel data set for 25 transition economies between 1990-98, we find that the main...

Although the theoretical literature has identified various sizeable benefits from foreign direct investment inflows (FDI), the empirical literature has been unable to establish a positive and significant impact of FDI on the rates of economic growth of host countries. One reason for this...

This study updates and extends to the period 1988/9--1992/3 our earlier analysis of the public finances of India. The foreign exchange crisis of early 1991 forced the government to recognize the severity of the fiscal crisis it was facing and led to the implementation of a restrictive fiscal and...

External knowledge is an important input for the innovation process of firms. Increasingly, this knowledge is likely to originate from outside of their national borders. This explains the preoccupation of policymakers with stimulating local technology transfers coming from international firms....

A three-sector macromodel of China’s economy is developed, in which the activity of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is constrained by the state-imposed credit plan for working capital. Our analysis indicates the weakness of credit control and interest rate variation as anti-inflationary tools....

This Paper provides a theoretical model on the trade-offs an MNE face when assigning subsidiaries an active role in innovation and organizing its R&D decentralized versus centralized. R&D decentralization avoids having to adapt centrally developed innovations to local markets, being able to use...

We analyse an economy that lacks a strong legal-political institutional infrastructure and is populated by multiple powerful groups. Powerful groups dynamically interact via a fiscal process that effectively allows open access to the aggregate capital stock. In equilibrium, this leads to slow...