Although the core model of the Dutch Disease makes unambiguous predictions regarding the negative effect of a resource boom on a country’s manufacturing exports, the empirical literature that has followed has not clearly identified this effect. I attribute this to the failure of the existing...

This study examines indicators of human capital accumulation together with data for natural resource abundance and rents in a panel of 102 countries running from 1970 to 1999. Mineral wealth makes a positive and marked difference on human capital accumulation. Matching on observables reveals...

Genuine saving measures net investment in produced, natural and human capital. It is a necessary condition for weak sustainable development that genuine saving not be persistently negative. However, according to data provided by the World Bank, resource-rich countries are systematically failing...

This paper discusses major policy issues related to commodity dependence and export diversification in low-income countries. Contrary to some widely-held view, it argues that natural resources are not necessarily a ‘curse’ that condemns low-income countries to underdevelopment but can...

Genuine saving is an established indicator of weak sustainable development that measures the net level of investment a country makes in produced, natural and human capital less depreciation. Maintaining this net level of investment above zero is a necessary condition for sustainable development....

The paper is concerned with a class of trend cycle filters, encompassing popular ones, such as the Hodrick-Prescott filter, that are derived using the Wiener-Kolmogorov signal extraction theory under maintained models that prove unrealistic in applied time series analysis. As the maintained...

Prevailing trade theory is a neglected stepchild of economics. Micro rejects the sole reason for trade’s occurrence. It declares zero profit in equilibrium. Monetary theory and macroeconomics dismiss concerns of trade financing. They assert that money has nothing to do with traded output, but...

We propose a new explanation for price rigidity. We show that if consumers form habits in individual goods, then firms face a time- inconsistency problem. The consumers’ habits imply that low prices in the future help attract customers in the present. Firms would therefore like to promise low...

A controversial result of some current research on the real business cycles is the claim that a common stochastic trend(the cumulative effect of permanent shocks to productivity)underlies the bulk of economic fluctuations. If confirmed, this will imply that many other forces have been relatively...

What generates persistence in inflation? Is inflation persistence structural? This paper investigates learning as a potential source of persistence in inflation. The paper focuses on the price-setting problem of firms and presents a model that nests structural sources of persistence (indexation)...