The importance of infrastructure for growth is well established in the macroeconomic literature. Previous research has treated public investment in infrastructure as exogenous. We remedy this shortcoming by providing a political economy analysis of infrastructure choice based upon consumer...

This paper develops a new simulation estimation algorithm that is particularly useful for estimating dynamic panel data models with unobserved endogenous state variables. The new approach can deal with the commonly encountered and widely discussed ``initial conditions problem,'' as well as the...

In this paper alternative approaches for testing the unit root hypothesis in panel data are considered. First, a robust version of the Dickey-Fuller t-statistic under contemporaneous correlated errors is suggested. Second, the GLS t-statistic is considered, which is based on the t-statistic of...

We consider the issue of cross sectional aggregation in nonstationary, heterogeneous panels where each unit cointegrates. We first derive the asymptotic properties of the aggregate estimate, and a necessary and sufficient condition for cointegration to hold in the aggregate relationship. We also...

It is known that, in the context of a real business cycle model with constant returns to scale and a balanced budget fiscal policy rule, steady state indeterminacy may arise as a result of endogenously determined labor income tax rates. This happens for a range of empirically plausible tax rates...

Empirical evidence documents a discernible negative relationship between government size, as measured by income tax rates and the output share of government purchases, and the magnitude of macroeconomic fluctuations in OECD countries since 1960. This implies that both taxes and public spending...

The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in the structure of the economy: an increase in the share of government spending in GDP and an increase in female labor force participation. This paper suggests that the changes in female labor force...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that private consumption is crowded-in by government spending. This outcome violates existing macroeconomic theory, according to which the negative wealth effect brought about by a rise in public expenditure should decrease consumption. In this paper, we...