In this paper we study the quantitative macroeconomic effects of public education spending in USA for the post-war period. Using comparable measures of human and physical capital, from Jorgenson and Fraumeni (1989, 1992a,b), we calibrate a standard dynamic general equilibrium model where human...

Rent seeking leads to a misallocation of resources that worsens economic outcomes and reduces aggregate welfare. We conduct a quantitative examination of the distributional effects of rent extraction via the financial sector. Rent seeking introduces a possibility for insurance against...

This paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to examine the quantitative macroeconomic implications of countercyclical fiscal policy for France, Germany and the UK. The model incorporates real wage rigidity which is the particular market failure justifying policy...

This paper compares some of the most common and debated ways of financing the provision of impure public goods/services in a unified dynamic general equilibrium framework. We study and rank a wide variety of ways ranging from provision without any user charges, to provision with full user...

No good comparable data on sizes of cultural sectors of the countries of Europe exist. Still, local and national governments of Europe spend substantial resources on culture and cultural sectors contribute significantly to employment and national income. After briefly describing special features...

Most evidence for the resource curse comes from cross-country growth regressions suffers from a bias originating from the high and ever-evolving volatility in commodity prices. This paper addresses these issues by providing new cross-country empirical evidence for the effect of resources in...

Are natural resources a 'curse' or a 'blessing'? The empirical evidence suggests either outcome is possible. The paper surveys a variety of hypotheses and supporting evidence for why some countries benefit and others lose from the presence of natural resources. These include that a resource...

This paper proposes a pair-wise approach to testing for output convergence that considers all N(N-1)/2 possible pairs of log per capita output gaps across N economies. A general probabilistic definition of output convergence is also proposed, which suggests that all such output gap pairs must be...

This paper studies the properties of second-best optimal policy in a standard general equilibrium model of growth augmented with renewable natural resources. The government chooses its policy instruments (the income tax rate and the allocation of collected tax revenues between public investment...