This lecture addresses three related aspects of monetary and fiscal management in Europe and elsewhere. First, I discuss the implications of economic integration for monetary and fiscal policy, especially the narrow focus on low inflation as the main objective of monetary policy. I argue that...

Using various methods estimates about the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing, transition and OECD countries are presented. The average size of the the shadow economy (in percent of GDP) over 1989-93 in developing countries in 39%, in transition countries 23% and in OECD countries 12%....

The authors argue that in modelling cross-country growth models one should first identify so-called outlying observations. For the data set of Sali-i-Martin, they use the least median of squares (LMS) estimator to identify outliers. As LMS is not suited for inference, they then use reweighted...

This paper reviews the relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and stresses how natural capital tends to crowd out foreign capital, social capital, human capital, and physical capital, thereby impeding economic growth across countries and presumably also over time....

Using a new specification, we reanalyze the data on worldwide environmental quality investigated by Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger in a well-known paper on the environmental Kuznets curve (which postulates an inverse U shaped relationship between income level and pollution). The new...

Rational politicians are interested in judicial independence (JI) in order to make their promises credible. But if politicians' preferences deviate from the dicta of the judiciary, they also have incentives to renege on judicial independence. These two conflicting aspects are measured by two...

In many OECD countries income inequality has risen, but surprisingly redistribution as well. The theory attributes this partly to the redistributive effect of education spending. In the model income inequality and growth depend in an inverted U-shaped way on education. To maintain a given level...

This paper is intended to demonstrate, in theory as well as empirically, how increased dependence on natural resources tends to go along with less rapid economic growth and greater inequality in the distribution of income across countries. On the other hand, public policy in support of education...

Considerable concern has been expressed in resent years about declines in voter participartion rates in the United States and in several other major democratic countries. Some feel low participation rates intropuce a "class bias" into the political process and thereby worsen the outcomes from...