The paper explores the effect of measurement errors on the estimation of a linear panel data model. The conventional fixed effects estimator, which ignores measurement errors, is biased. By correcting for the bias one can construct consistent and asymptotically normal estimators. In addition, we...

When there is exact collinearity between regressors, their individual coefficients are not identified, but given an informative prior their Bayesian posterior means are well defined. The case of high but not exact collinearity is more complicated but similar results follow. Just as exact...

This paper introduces a new measure of dependence or jointness among explanatory variables. Jointness is based on the joint posterior distribution of variables over the model space, thereby taking model uncertainty into account. By looking beyond marginal measures of variable importance,...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing user fees for publicly provided excludable public goods into a model with consumption and income taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in earnings and second-best policy is chosen by a...

Measured rates of growth in real per capita income differ drastically depending on the data source. This phenomenon occurs largely because data sets differ in whether and how they adjust for changes in relative prices across countries. Replication of several recent studies of growth determinants...

The perpetual inventory method used for the construction of education data per country leads to systematic measurement error. This paper analyses the effect of this measurement error on GDP regressions. There is a systematic difference in the education level between census data and observations...

In this paper we study the effect of institutional reform on the decision to hold risky assets at the extensive and the intensive margin. We therefore make use of the natural experiment of German Division and Reunification and, based on savings bank customer data from German savings banks, study...

A growing literature documents the existence of strategic political reactions to public expenditure between rival jurisdictions. These interactions can potentially create a downward expenditure spiral (‘race to the bottom') or a rising expenditure spiral (‘race to the top'). However, in the...

A large literature examines government fiscal interactions in federations. However, the empirical evidence is scattered and inconclusive, especially with respect to the size of interactions, as well as the institutional and economic determinants underpinning them. This paper uses meta-regression...

We investigate country heterogeneity in cross-country growth regressions. In contrast to the previous literature that focuses on low-income countries, this study also highlights growth determinants in high-income (OECD) countries. We introduce Iterative Bayesian Model Averaging (IBMA) to address...