We test a simple model of exchange rate regime choice with data for non-OECD countries covering the period 1980-94. We find the variance of output at home and in potential target countries as well as the correlation between home and foreign real activity are powerful and robust predictors of...

Factor price equality across countries is an important implication of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model of international trade. Although an influential theoretical result, the model has received surprisingly little empirical support. Burgman and Geppert (1993) argue that this might be due to...

Our societies are witnessing a steady increase in longevity. This demographic evolution is accompanied by some convergence across countries, whereas substantial longevity inequalities persist within nations. The goal of this article is to survey some crucial implications of changing longevity on...

We test weather, in addition to economic conditions, IMF credit is influenced by political factors. On the basis of a panel model for 128 countries over the period 1972-1998, we find that dept service scaled to exports, international reserve holdings scaled to imports and economic growth, as...

It is often argued that deregulation of international transactions and its effects on the "globalization" of financial markets is behind the decline in the attractiveness of fixed exchange rate regimes. We argue that, instead, much of the recently observed decrease in the level of capital...

The purpose of this paper is to survey the theoretical literature on wealth transfer taxation. The focus is normative: we are looking at the design of an optimal tax structure from the standpoint of both equity and efficiency. The gist of this survey is that the optimal design closely depends on...

The pending enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) has brought to the fore the discussion of the voting right distribution in the European Central Bank (ECB) council. We show that, in a model where labor unions internalize the inflationary consequences of wage setting, deviating from a...