We explore the link between international stock market comovement and the degree to which firms operate globally. Using stock returns and balance sheet data for companies in 20 countries, we estimate a factor model that decomposes stock returns into global, country-specific and industry-specific...

Unlike in Asia, the manufacturing sector has not (yet) become a driver of structural change in Africa. One common explanation is that the natural resource-focus of many African economies leads to Dutch disease effects. To test this argument for the case of newly found oil in Ghana we develop a...

In this paper, we present a standard quality ladders endogenous growth model with one significant new assumption, that it takes time for firms to learn how to export. We show that this model without Melitz-type assumptions can account for all the evidence that the Melitz (2003) model was...

Estonia is widely regarded as a paramount example for a successful transformation of a socialist economic system to a functioning market economy. Against the backdrop of this positive image which contrasts strongly with the crisis scenarios in Southern Europe the remaining problems of Estonia...

In this paper the authors conduct a meta-analysis to examine the link between R&D spending and economic growth in the EU and other regions. The results suggest that the growth-enhancing effect of R&D in the EU15 countries does not differ from that in other countries in general, but it is less...

By using two alternative intra-industry trade models (1. - New goods cannot be introduced into the economy; 2. - The possibility for a set of capital goods available in the economy to vary; both models consider the existence of an intersectoral linkage), I show by means of Applied General...

This paper examines how capital account liberalization (CAL) affects Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows. The authors use the System Generalized-Method-of-Moments (GMM) estimator developed for the dynamic panel model for a sample of 17 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries from 1985...

In this paper, we revisit the empirical evidence on the relationship between trade openness and long-run economic growth over the sample period 1960-2000. In contrast to previous studies focusing mainly on the period 1970-1990, this paper reassesses the openness-growth nexus over a much longer...

This paper studies the impact of financial openness on the size of government, and other key economic variables, such as the consumption-wealth ratio, the growth rate of wealth, and welfare, in a two-country world, based on a portfolio approach, assuming that public spending is...

Large-scale agricultural land acquisitions might entail substantial welfare implications for the affected rural population. Whether the impacts are indeed as devastating as the popular notion of "land grabs" would suggest depends on a number of factors, including the size of compensation...