In this paper I investigate the relationship between unionization and the size of the informal economy. Using a cross-country panel data for 30 countries over the period from 1960 to 2009, I find a strong and robust negative correlation between unionization and the size of the informal economy.

In this paper we examine the effects of the ratio of internal to external public debt on a country's economic growth. These effects are examined through a competitive, decentralized model of endogenous economic growth, which relies on public investments. Our findings show that as the...

In this paper, we obtain the closed form of fiscal multipliers in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with liquidity-constrained households. The closed form indicates that the first-period multiplier depends monotonically on the fraction of liquidity-constrained households over all...

Labor and product market regulations affect the unemployment rate without a doubt. Econometricians, however, have yet to establish an unequivocal significance of this impact. The bayesian model averaging approach applied in this paper permits to unambiguously identify institutional indicators...

This paper investigates the heterogenous panels Granger causality between exports and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for the twelve new EU countries from 1995 until 2010. The cointegration test by Pedroni (1999) shows a long run heterogenous relationship. A two-stage Engle and Granger procedure...

We reexamine the crowding out hypothesis for India for the period 1970-71 to 2009-10. Applying a flexible accelerator model in a VECM framework, we find that government investment crowds out private investment in the long run while GDP has a significantly positive impact on the later. We also...

Habit formation in consumption has important implications for the effects of macroeconomic policies. Using micro data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC) for the period 1998-2004, an Euler equation à la Dynan (2000) allowing for time-nonseparablity in consumer preferences is...

The Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) is one of the key variables to which economists pay considerable attention for assessing US economic activities, particularly, business conditions in the manufacturing sector. Although the PMI has been used to assess the US economy, there is hardly any...

This note discusses expenditure multipliers and their use in analyzing spending efficiency. Conceptual models are developed to examine the marginal propensities; namely consumption and investment and their role in influencing the expenditure multiplier, aggregate spending cycles, consumption and...

This paper analyzes the impact of business regulation on private investment in developing countries with a particular emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. Using the principal component analysis methodology, we construct the following composite indexes of the regulatory framework: entry regulation,...