The Paper provides a reconciliation of Lucas’ paradox, based on fixed setup costs of new investments. With such costs, it does not pay a firm to make a ‘small’ investment, even though such an investment is called for by marginal productivity conditions. Using a sample of 45 developed and...

The Paper develops a model with lumpy setup costs of new investment, which govern the flows of FDI. Foreign investment decisions are two-fold: whether to export FDI and, if so, how much. The first decision is governed by total profitability considerations, whereas the second is governed by...

It has been a remarkably difficult empirical task to identify clear-cut real effects of exchange-rate regimes on the open economy. Similarly, no definitive view emerges as to the aggregate effects of capital account liberalizations. The main hypothesis of the Paper is that a direct and an...

This study explains the evolution of wage inequality over the last 30 years and supports this explanation with evidence. At each level of schooling, a faster rate of technological progress weakens the link between schooling and work and increases the unknown needed to cope with during one's...

This paper studies sharp reductions in current account deficits and large exchange rate depreciations in low- and middle-income countries. It examines which factors help predict the occurrence of a reversal or a currency crisis, and how these events affect macroeconomic performance. It finds...

It is well known that in the Mundell-Fleming model capital mobility creates a channel through which permanent (transitory) shocks to aggregate demand such as fiscal and trade shocks are completely (partially) neutralized by the response of the real exchange rate. An important policy implication...

Using a human-capital-based growth model, we show the essential role of labour mobility and cross-country tax harmonization in equalizing income levels of countries that start off from different initial income positions. Knowledge spillovers cum labour mobility are the driving forces behind the...

We develop a stylised model of multiple equilibria, with country risk spreads at the focus of the analysis. Fears that the country default on its debt triggers a reversal in the direction of inflows of international financial capital raise interest-rate spreads and thus the cost of servicing the...

This paper brings out the special mechanism through which taxes influence bilateral FDI, when investment decisions are two-fold in the presence of fixed setup flows costs. For each pair of source-host countries, there is a set of factors determining whether aggregate FDI flows will occur at all,...

A number of developing countries have run large and persistent current account deficits in both the late-1970s/early-1980s and in the early-1990s, raising the issue of whether these persistent imbalances are sustainable. This paper puts forward a notion of current account sustainability and...