Noting that many economic variables display occasional shifts in their second order moments, we investigate the performance of homogenous panel unit root tests in the presence of permanent volatility shifts. It is shown that in this case, panel unit root tests derived under time invariant...

We introduce a new, factor based bootstrap approach which is robust under heteroskedastic error terms for inference in functional coefficient models. Modeling the functional coefficient parametrically, the bootstrap approximation of an F statistic is shown to hold asymptotically. In simulation...

We propose a simple method to identify the effects of unilateral and non-discriminatory trade policies on bilateral trade within a theoretically-consistent empirical gravity model. Specifically, we argue that structural gravity estimations should be performed with data that include not only...

We propose and apply methods to quantify the impact of national institutions on international trade and development. We are able to identify the direct impact of country-specific institutions on international trade within the structural gravity framework. Our approach naturally addresses the...

What does the saving-investment (SI) relation really measure and how should the (SI) relation be measured? These are two of the most discussed issues triggered by the so called Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. Based on panel data we introduce a new variant of functional coefficient models that allow to...