The objective of this note is to document the importance of improvements relative to the other forms of capital spending and to determine whether improvements have similar cyclical properties as maintenance and repair. To shed some light on these issues, we look at a unique data set on Swiss...

In this article, we demonstrate that a small degree of stochastic variation in the depreciation rate of capital can greatly reduce the comovement between hours worked and labour productivity in a neoclassical growth model. The depreciation rate is modeled as a Markov process to place a strict...

This study seeks to determine if there were identifiable contrasts between the Austrian and Thai pegs that would have hinted at problems for Thailand prior to July 1997. The strategy is to first estimate a reaction function of a successful pegging country, i.e. Austria, to help identify salient...

One test of an exchange-rate peg is to ask whether the implicit inflation target of the pegging country is the same as that of the anchor country. If the inflation targets of the two countries are different, the peg's long-run credibility should be rejected. We examine the Austrian experience...