Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

We study the design of optimal monetary policy (Ramsey policies) in a model with sticky prices and unionized labour markets. Collective wage bargaining and unions monopoly power tend to dampen wage fluctuations and to amplify employment fluctuations relatively to a DNK model with walrasian...

The currency crises of the 1990s all exhibit a divergence of the nominal and the real exchange rate together with an increase in the negative current account. The nominal rate does not reflect inflation differences fully and the ensuing real appreciation leads to a negative current account. This...

How can we explain the observed behavior of aggregate inflation in response to e.g. monetary policy changes? Mankiw and Reis (2002) have proposed sticky information as an alternative to Calvo sticky prices in order to model the conventional view that i) inflation reacts with delay and gradually...

This paper proposes an approach for estimating the uncertainty associated with model-based macroeconomic forecasts. We argue that estimated forecast intervals should account for the uncertainty arising from selecting the specification of an empirical forecasting model from the sample data. To...

We consider whether Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are mainly poor because they are governed worse than other countries, as suggested by recent studies on the supremacy of institutions. Our empirical results show that the supremacy of institutions does not hold. SSA countries appear to face...

We explore the uses of double-calibrated general equilibrium models as a decomposition tool for analysing contributory factors in the growth and increasing wage inequality in an advanced economy (the UK) since 1979. Calibration of a model to start and end years, based upon an assumed functional...

This paper addresses the poor economic performance of Eastern Europe in the 1990s and the future development potential of the region in the light of the theories of economic growth and human capital and their empirical tests. It concludes that Eastern Europe is likely to have fallen into a...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

This paper is a preliminary appraisal ofthe stylised facts and the major open questions - both methodological and Substantive - that have emerged in the empirical literature on international per-capita income and productivity convergence. On basis of various distinctivc lines of reasoning, it is...