This paper investigates the effect of cyclical macroeconomic policy and financial sector characteristics on growth. Using cross-country, cross-industry OECD data, it yields two main findings. First, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies foster growth disproportionately in more...

The SME sector is often hailed as an important engine of economic growth. But recent research suggests that young rather than small firms are the main contributors to employment growth. This paper shows that young firms are also key contributors to profit growth across advanced economies. It...

This paper investigates how financial development affects aggregate productivity growth. Based on a sample of developed and emerging economies, we first show that the level of financial development is good only up to a point, after which it becomes a drag on growth. Second, focusing on advanced...

In this paper we examine the negative relationship between the rate of growth of the financial sector and the rate of growth of total factor productivity. We begin by showing that by disproportionately benefiting high collateral/low productivity projects, an exogenous increase in finance reduces...

Using micro data from the Duke University quarterly survey of Chief Financial Officers, we show that corporate investment plans as well as actual investment are well explained by CFOs' expectations of earnings growth. The information in expectations data is not subsumed by traditional variables,...

We analyse the evolution and main drivers of residential investment, using a panel with quarterly data for 15 advanced economies since the 1970s. Residential investment is a notably volatile component of real GDP in all countries in the sample. We find real house price growth, net migration...

We propose a regime-switching approach to deal with the lower bound on nominal interest rates in dynamic term structure modelling. In the "lower bound regime", the short term rate is expected to remain constant at levels close to the effective lower bound; in the "normal regime", the short rate...

We provide a measure of the output gap that filters out the impact of the commodity and net capital inflows booms for Latin American countries. These two factors temporarily boost output and so are likely to push up estimates of potential growth in the region to unrealistic levels, thereby...

This paper analyzes the impact of cyclical fiscal policy on industry growth. Using Rajan and Zingales' (1998) difference-in-difference methodology on a panel data sample of manufacturing industries across 15 OECD countries over the period 1980-2005, we show that industries with relatively...

We assess the link between fiscal policy and credit and commodity price booms and busts. We do so by investigating the impact of financial and commodity price cycles on the identification of episodes of fiscal consolidation and stimulus and the size of the fiscal impulse. We find that...