Is there a single recipe for fast growth? Much of the recent cross-section empirical growth literature implicitly assumes there is. Yet both development and growth theory as well as casual empiricism suggest pervasive non-linearities in the growth process. Low inflation may grease the wheels of...

We examine whether the aggregate U.S. business cycle is driven mainly by geographical" shocks (affecting all sectors within a state), or by sectoral shocks (affecting the same sector in all" states). We find that, at the level of an individual sector in an individual state growth are driven by...

The relevance of the exchange rate regime for macroeconomic performance remains a key issue in international macroeconomics. We use a comprehensive dataset covering nine regime-types for one hundred forty countries over thirty years to examine the link between the regime, inflation, and growth....

Export firms are often assumed to stabilize destination market prices in the face of nominal exchange rate changes in order to protect market share. We show that standard tests of such pricing to market fail to discriminate against the alternative hypothesis of menu costs. As a case study, we...

Recent moves towards greater monetary integration in Western Europe - and disintegration in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union - have rekindled interest in the theoretical and empirical aspects of optimal currency areas (OCA). In this paper, we examine the marginal benefit of increasing...

Recent studies suggest that intranational trade is "excessive' compared to international trade. An intuitive explanation for this home bias is provided by national trade barriers. A dataset of trade between US states, however, reveals that home bias extends to subnational units. The data suggest...

We extend the traditional tax evasion model to take account of the interaction between individual compliance decisions and perceived detection probabilities. The generalization provides a rationale for "anti-tax revolutions" characterized by a sudden shift of a significant fraction of the tax...

Malaria ranks among the foremost health issues facing tropical countries. In this paper, we explore the determinants of cross-country differences in malaria morbidity, and examine the linkage between malaria and economic growth. Using a classification rule analysis, we confirm the dominant role...

We use retail transaction prices for a multinational retailer to examine the extent and permanence of violations of the law of one price (LOOP). For identical products, we find typical deviations of twenty to fifty percent, though there is muted evidence for convergence over time. Such...

Post-1945 Europe had many of the traits observed today in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: price controls, shortages, black markets and a monetary overhang. The policy response in most countries was monetary reform - - the deliberate immobilization of liquid assets and in many instances an...