Showing 1 - 10 of 60
This paper explains why a laissez-faire approach may fail to account for externalities in transforming economies, focusing on externalities associated with supply bottlenecks and adjustment costs. Bottlenecks tend to arise whenever input requirements are stochastic and the opportunity cost of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474590
Since the early 1980s, wage dispersion and the ratio of skilled to unskilled employment have increased significantly in several industrial countries. A number of economists have attributed these trends to skill-biased technical progress. This paper studies the wage and employment effects of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012473447
This paper investigates an economy in which there are short-term wage contracts that are re-negotiated under certain conditions. This paper determines the optimal frequency of wage re-negotiation and shows that it depends positively on measures of aggregate variability and Phillips curve slope....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012477817
This paper clarifies one of the puzzling results of the economic growth literature: the impact of military expenditure is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. We start by empirical evaluation of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469080
In contrast, we find that past crisis experience has a significant impact on savings. When facing considerable political risk, the past does seem to matter - countries with more people who were exposed, over their lifetime, to larger disasters will tend to save more. This association, however,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460133
This paper evaluates the degree to which current account patterns are explained by the variables suggested by the literature, and reflects on possible future patterns. We start with panel regressions explaining the current account of 69 countries during 1981-2006. We identify an asymmetric...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464194
Using an uneven panel of 135 countries from 1995 to 2014, we investigate the link between interest rates and private saving, and focus on whether the interest rate effect is dominated by the income (i.e., negative) or the substitution (i.e., positive) effect. With the baseline estimation, we...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455808
We use data from the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) database to perform preliminary empirical analysis of the interplay between quality and quantity of finance in accounting for the output growth of ten sectors. We review the existing literature and some salient open questions...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457749
This paper models and tests the implications of costly enforcement of property rights on the pattern of foreign direct investment (FDI). We posit that domestic agents have a comparative advantage over foreign agents in overcoming some of the obstacles associated with corruption and weak...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012469382
This paper examines the extent to which permanent terms-of-trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings. The first part uses a simple three-period model to show that, if households expect to face binding borrowing constraints in bad states of nature, savings rates will respond...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471007