The rate-of-return-dominance puzzle asks why low-return assets, like fiat money, are used in actual economies given that risk-free higher-return assets are available. As long as this question remains unresolved, most conclusions from monetary models which arbitrarily restrict the marketability...

In many poor countries, the problem is not that governments do not invest, but that these investments do not create productive capital. So, the cost of public investments does not correspond to the value of the capital stocks. In this paper, we propose an original non parametric approach to...

Periods for european convergence Real convergence of european economies is disputed in recent studies which suggest an opposition between real and nominal convergence. This paper enlarges the perspective and considers real convergence over différents periods covering twelve decades. Results for...

The authors provide various estimates of the government net capital stocks for a panel of 26 developing countries over the period 1970-2001. Two kinds of internationally comparable series of public capital stocks are presented. The first estimates are based on the standard perpetual inventory...

The effect of debt on private investment is theoretically undetermined. Indeed, according to the theory, the relation between debt and private investment can either be negative (debt overhang) or positive (accelerator effect on economic growth, hence on private investment). Our study consists in...

L’objet de cette article est de porter une appréciation sur l’évolution de la compétitivité extérieure du Cameroun et donc sur sa politique de change. Il étudie la relation entre le système de change et les performances macro-économiques du Cameroun, pays membre de la Zone Franc sur...

This report presents a structural analysis of the Ghanaian economy, an outlook of its recent evolution and growth estimations for 2001 and 2002. Ghana holds a special position in West Africa, because of its strong economic growth during the last twenty years and its flexible exchange rate...

The article studies the conceptions of causality encountered in macroeconometrics. From an empiricist standpoint, it is natural to privilege measurements of phenomenal associations, spread over a period of time, between series of data. This method has made a major comeback since the 1970s,...

This text is drawn from a talk given on October 2 on the occasion of the inauguration of the chair in “Ecological Reconversion, Work, Employment and Social Policy” at the Collège d’Études Mondiales, in collaboration with the University of Paris-Dauphine.