In this paper, we examine returns in the Chinese A and B stock markets for evidence of calendar anomalies. We find that both cultural and structural (segmentation) factors play an important role in influencing the pricing of both A- and B-shares in China. There is some evidence of a February...

Using data from Argentina, Australia, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and the United States, we identify three types of threshold effects when assessing the impact of economic activity on nonperforming loans (NPLs). For advanced financial systems showing low NPLs, there is an embedded...

Recent work on the political economy of fiscal policy has asked how budgetary institutions affect fiscal outcomes. But what determines the budgetary institutions? In this paper I consider one such institution: the executive veto. A simple theoretical framework predicts that jurisdictions with...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the response of labor productivity to the arrival of new inventions. The benchmark measure of technological progress is given by data on patent applications in the U.S. over the period 1889-2002. The analysis shows that labor productivity may temporarily...

We analyze the effect of IMF programs on economic agents' expectations about the economy in transitional countries using survey data from the Central and Eastern Eurobarometer poll, an annual general public survey monitoring the evolution of public opinion from 1990 to 1997. Previous studies, in...

This paper investigates the generalized parametric measurement methods of aggregate operational risk in compliance with the regulatory capital standards for operational risk in the New Basel Capital Accord ("Basel II"). Operational risk is commonly defined as the risk of loss resulting from...

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...

The empirical analysis in "International R&D Spillovers" (Coe and Helpman, 1995) is first revisited by applying modern panel cointegration estimation techniques to an expanded data set that we have constructed for the purpose of this study. The new estimates confirm the key results reported in...

We construct a financial vulnerability indicator that is consistent with the theoretical literature on determinants of defaults. It is based on the amount of new foreign financing that is needed to avoid a default or an import adjustment, expressed as a proportion of the country's sources of...

This paper addresses the issue of the appropriate exchange rate regimes for Jordan and Lebanon in the context of the literature on optimum currency areas and the arguments concerning the use of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor for the economy. It presents some empirical results on the...