We estimate the interrelationships among economic institutions, political institutions, openness, and income levels, using identification through heteroskedasticity (IH). We split our cross-national dataset into two sub-samples: (i) colonies versus non-colonies; and (ii) continents aligned on an...

Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) argue that the relation between openness and growth is still an open question. One of the main problems in the assessment of the effect is the endogeneity of the relation. In order to address this issue, this paper applies the identification through heteroskedasticity...

This paper measures the effects of the risk of war on nine U.S. financial variables using a heteroskedasticity-based estimation technique. The results indicate that increases in the risk of war cause declines in Treasury yields and equity prices, a widening of lower-grade corporate spreads, a...

This paper studies the role of insider trading in explaining cross-country differences in stock market volatility. It introduces a new measure of insider trading. The central finding is that countries with more prevalent insider trading have more volatile stock markets, even after one controls...

Does country transparency affect international portfolio investment? We examine this and related questions using some new measures of transparency and a unique micro dataset on international portfolio holdings. We distinguish between government and corporate transparency. There is clear evidence...

Crony capitalism and self-fulfilling expectations by international creditors are often suggested as two rival explanations for currency crisis. This paper examines a possible linkage between the two that has not been explored much in the literature: corruption may affect a country's composition...

We develop a new targeted maximum likelihood estimation method that provides improved forecasting for misspecified linear autoregressive models. The method weighs data points in the observed sample and is useful in the presence of data generating processes featuring structural breaks, complex...