Some past studies analyzed Spanish monetary policy with the standard VAR. Their problem is that this method obliges researchers to impose a certain extreme form of the short run policy rule on their models. Hence, it does not allow researchers to study the possibility of structural changes in...

This paper demonstrates that, unlike what the conventional wisdom says, measurement error biases in panel data estimation of convergence using OLS with fixed effects are huge, not trivial. It does so by way of the "skipping estimation"': taking data from every m years of the sample (where m is...

It is sometimes argued that the central banks influence the private economy in the short run through controlling a specific component of high powered money, not its total amount. Using a structural VAR approach, this paper evaluates this claim empirically, in the context of the Japanese economy....

This paper addresses three questions: (1) why does the share of skilled workers in regional population tend to be higher in wealthier regions? (2) what determines changes in this share over time? and (3) why is it that internal migration tends to raise average skill levels of the receiving...

I study the role of internal migration in income convergence across regions in Japan. Neoclassical theory predicts that migration should have been an important source of convergence. Regression results, however, suggest that migration did not contribute to convergence. I investigate the...

A new debate over the speed of convergence in per capita income across economies is going on. Cross sectional estimates support the idea of slow convergence of about two percent per year. Panel data estimates support the idea of fast convergence of five, ten or even twenty percent per year. This...