The 'saving for a rainy day' hypothesis implies that households' saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...

This paper estimates how the US budget responds to shocks in taxes, spending and output. In particular, we consider the dynamic adjustment of the two budget components (taxes and spending) to such shocks. The recently developed Generalized Impulse Response Function, which takes the historical...

This study explores the determinants of investment using both aggregated industry-level data and disaggretated data on 27 sub-sectors of the manufacturing sector for the period 1970-2001. According to the results in this study, the government has potentially powerful means at its disposal to...

This paper evaluates the effect of shocks in government investment on private investment and national income, focusing on "crowding-in" or "crowding-out" effect in India. Recent studies do not deal with this issue by taking account of the heterogeneous effect of public investment as regards to...

Despite the recent increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) to African countries, these resources have not had a meaningful impact on economic development because of limited effects on domestic factor markets, especially domestic investment and employment. In this context, this study analyses...

Recent studies have found that resource-rich low-income countries are better off investing their resource revenues domestically rather than saving them abroad in a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). This paper finds an optimal rule-based policy of accumulating public capital and its associated public...

The economy of the European Union has not recovered from the impact of the economic and financial crisis. Growth rates remain low and investment activity is weak. This questions current economic policies of the Economic and Monetary Union, known as austerity. In opposition to fiscal contraction...

The euro crisis remains unresolved and the euro currency union incomplete and extraordinarily vulnerable. The euro regime's essential flaw and ultimate source of vulnerability is the decoupling of central bank and treasury institutions in the euro currency union. We propose a 'Euro Treasury'...

Interest rate derivatives are among the most actively traded financial instruments in the main currency areas. With values of positions reacting immediately to the underlying index of daily interbank rates, manipulation has become an increasing challenge for the operational implementation of...

With increasing appreciation of the fact that stock return variance is stochastic and variance risk is heavily priced, the industry has created a series of variance derivative products to span variance risk. The variance swap contract is the most actively traded of these products. It pays at...