Instrumental Variables (IV) methods identify internally valid causal effects for individuals whose treatment status is manipulable by the instrument at hand. Inference for other populations requires some sort of homogeneity assumption. This paper outlines a theoretical framework that nests all...

The paper develops a model with lumpy setup costs of new investment, which govern the flows of FDI. Foreign investment decisions are two-fold: whether to export FDI and, if so, how much. The first decision is governed by total profitability considerations, whereas the second is governed by...

The paper provides a reconciliation of Lucas' paradox, based on fixed setup costs of new investments. With such costs, it does not pay a firm to make a small' investment, even though such an investment is called for by marginal productivity conditions. Using a sample of 45 developed and...

The view that empirical strategies in economics should be transparent and credible now goes almost without saying. The local average treatment effects (LATE) framework for causal inference helped make this so. The LATE theorem tells us for whom particular instrumental variables (IV) and...

A longstanding question in the economics of the family is the relationship between sibship size and subsequent human capital formation and economic welfare. If there is a "quantity-quality trade-off," then policies that discourage large families should lead to increased human capital, higher...

Time series data are widely used to explore causal relationships, typically in a regression framework with lagged dependent variables. Regression-based causality tests rely on an array of functional form and distributional assumptions for valid causal inference. This paper develops a...

In Razin, Sadka and Yuen (1998, 1999a), we explored the policy implications of the home-bias in international portfolio investment as a result of asymmetric information problems in which domestic savers, being 'close' to the domestic market, have an informational advantage over foreign portfolio...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is observed to be a predominant form of capital flows to emerging economies, especially when they are liquidity-constrained internationally during a global financial crisis. The financial aspects of FDI are the focus of the paper. We analyze the problem of...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is observed to be a predominant form of capital flows to low and middle income countries with insufficiently developed capital markets. This paper analyzes the problem of channeling domestic savings into productive investment in the presence of asymmetric...

We develop a framework in which the host country productivity has a positive effect on the intensive margin (the size of FDI flows), but only an ambiguous effect on the extensive margin (the likelihood of FDI flows to occur). The source-country productivity has a negative effect on the extensive...