This paper uses panel data for 19 OECD countries and finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...

This paper proposes a hidden state Markov model (HMM) that incorporates workers' unobserved labor market attachment into the analysis of labor market dynamics. Unlike previous literature, which typically assumes that a worker's observed labor force status follows a first-order Markov process,...

Monthly economic indicators support policy analysis of current economic developments and forecasting. This paper presents an overview of the data and statistical requirements to develop those indicators taking into account resource constraints that LIC typically face. We review statistical...

This paper takes stock of the global economic recovery a decade after the 2008 financial crisis. Output losses after the crisis appear to be persistent, irrespective of whether a country suffered a banking crisis in 2007-08. Sluggish investment was a key channel through which these losses...

This paper is the first attempt to directly explore the long-run nonlinear relationship between the shadow economy and level of development. Using a dataset of 158 countries over the period from 1996 to 2015, our results reveal a robust U-shaped relationship between the shadow economy size and...

This paper analyzes the sources of Mexico''s economic growth since the 1960s and compares various decompositions of historical growth into its trend and cyclical components. The role of the implied output gaps in the inflationary process is then assessed. Looking ahead, the paper presents...

Heightened uncertainty since the onset of the Great Recession has materially increased saving rates, contributing to lower consumption and GDP growth. Consistent with a model of precautionary savings in the face of uncertainty, we find for a panel of advanced economies that greater labor income...