This paper examines the robustness of explanatory variables in cross-country economic growth regressions. It employs a novel approach, Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE), which constructs estimates as a weighted average of OLS estimates for every possible combination of included...

The paper examines if real stock returns in four countries are consistent with consumption-based models of international asset pricing. The paper finds that ex-ante real stock returns exhibit statistically significant fluctuations over time and that these fluctuations cannot be explained by...

We show that "commodity currency" exchange rates have remarkably robust power in predicting global commodity prices, both in-sample and out-of-sample, and against a variety of alternative benchmarks. This result is of particular interest to policymakers, given the lack of deep forward markets in...

Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large empirical literature providing an affirmative answer to this question. We argue that methodological problems with the empirical...

This paper argues that domestic social conflicts are a key to understanding why growth rates lack persistence and why so many countries have experienced a growth collapse after the mid-1970s. It emphasizes conflicts interact with external shocks on the one hand, and the domestic institutions of...

This paper reviews the large and growing literature which tests PPP and other models of the long-run real exchange rate. We distinguish three different stages of PPP testing and focus on what has been learned from each. The most important overall lesson has been that the real exchange rate...

In the public imagination globalization's adverse effects have loomed large, contributing significantly to the backlash against the political mainstream and the rise of far-right populism. The literature on trade and inequality is in fact exceptionally rich, with important theoretical insights...

We estimate the interrelationships among economic institutions, political institutions, openness, and income levels, using identification through heteroskedasticity (IH). We split our cross-national dataset into two sub-samples: (i) colonies versus non-colonies; and (ii) continents aligned on an...