A common view in the literature is that the effect of energy price shocks on macroeconomic aggregates is asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases. We show that widely used asymmetric vector autoregressive models of the transmission of energy price shocks are misspecified, resulting in...

Large fluctuations in energy prices have been a distinguishing characteristic of the U.S. economy since the 1970s. Turmoil in the Middle East, rising energy prices in the U.S. and evidence of global warming recently have reignited interest in the link between energy prices and economic...

We study the impact of regional and sectoral productivity changes on the U.S. economy. To that end, we consider an environment that captures the effects of interregional and intersectoral trade in propagating disaggregated productivity changes at the level of a sector in a given U.S. state to...

Investment in inventories is known to be important for observed changes in GDP. However, inventory investment and the possibility that firms may fail to sell all goods are typically ignored in business cycle models. Using US data, the ability to sell is shown to be strongly procyclical. By...

We use a Ricardo-Viner model to study the determinants of the supply of outmigration in developing countries in a model with heterogenous households. We assume that heterogeneity and migration costs prevent households from total migration. Data are calibrated to two archetypal developing...

This paper provides insights into the relationship between the substantial ageing of the European labour force, large migration movements, and individual labour mobility. First, qualitative predictions are derived using the theory of production with multiple inputs. Second, quantitative...

This paper argues that the theoretical foundations for the gravity equation are general, while the empirical performance of the gravity equation is specific to the type of goods examined. Most existing theory for the gravity equation depends on the assumption of differentiated goods. We show...

Development accounting exercises based on an aggregate production function find technology is biased in favour of a country's abundant production factors. We provide an explanation to this finding based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Countries trade and specialize in the industries that use...