Oil exporters have run large current account surpluses. We explore oil exporters' role in our understanding and the resolution of global imbalances. Current account dynamics are estimated for oil-exporting countries and the rest of the world. We find that fiscal policy has a much stronger effect...

This paper studies the historical importance of OPEC for oil price fluctuations. An event-study approach is used to identify the effects of OPEC announcements on oil price fluctuations. Results show that price volatility is higher than typical around OPEC meetings. Also, members' compliance, a...

This paper investigates the causes of extreme fluctuations in commodity prices from 1990 to 2010. Analyzing two very distinct commodities-crude oil and fine wine, we find that macroeconomic factors are the main determinants of commodity prices. Although supply constraints have the expected...

Using panel data from 120 developing countries from 1975 to 2000, this paper explores the direct and indirect channels linking social spending, human capital, and growth in a system of equations. The paper finds that both education and health spending have a positive and significant direct...

This paper investigates the impact of public capital on private sector output by testing and estimating an aggregate production function for the U.S. economy over the postwar period augmented to include the stock of public capital as an additional factor input. We use patent applications to...

This paper attempts to identify robust patterns of cross-country growth behavior in the world as a whole and Africa. It employs a novel methodology that incorporates a dynamic panel estimator, and Bayesian Model Averaging to explicitly account for model uncertainty. The findings indicate that:...

This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external data, and fiscal and financial variables spanning over a century. The constructed indices are used to derive a...

Data on the weekly operating time of capital improve the measurement of effective capital input in production. The production function of the French business sector is found to be consistent with a Cobb-Douglas technology under constant returns to scale. Total factor productivity growth,...

The paper investigates how changes in industries' funding costs affect total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Based on panel regressions using 31 U.S. and Canadian industries between 1991 and 2007, and using industries' dependence on external funding as an identification mechanism, we show that...

This paper investigates the relationship between unrecorded economic activity associated with the production of illicit coca and formally recorded economic activity in Peru. It does so by attempting to construct new regional level estimates for coca production and by implementing recently...