The evidence of the last 20 years of recurring output busts and rapid reversals of the current account in emerging markets indicates that domestic agents may not be able to borrow in international capital markets to fully insure themselves against internal and external shocks. This paper models...

This paper documents the dynamic properties of national output, its components, and the current account for five OECD countries. There is strong evidence of conditional volatility for almost all time series as well as significant deviations from normality. The deviations are detected...

Significant nonlinearities are found in several cyclical components macroeconomic time series across countries. Standard equilibrium models of business cycles successfully explain most first and second moments of these time series. Nevertheless, this paper shows that a model of this class cannot...

A simple intellectual property rights (IPRs) framework is introduced into a dynamic quality ladder model of technological diffusion between innovating firms in one country and imitating firms in another country. The presence of technological spillovers and feedback effects between firms in the...

This paper studies the transitional dynamics in a quality ladder model of endogenous growth in which North-South trade leads to technological diffusion through reverse engineering of intermediate goods. The concept of learning-to-learn is incorporated into both imitative and innovative...

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology diffusion can be exponential, which would predict that nations would exhibit positive catch-up with the leader nation, or logistic, in which a country with...

This paper models and tests the implications of institutional efficiency on the pattern of foreign direct investment (FDI). We posit that domestic agents have a comparative advantage over foreign agents in overcoming some of the obstacles associated with corruption and weak institutions. We...

This paper studies a competitive banking industry subject to common and idiosyncratic shocks. The induced correlation across bank portfolio returns can be used by a regulator to improve inferences about bank portfolio choices. We compare two types of closure rules: (1) an 'absolute closure...

One reason why countries service their external debts is the fear that default might lead to shrinkage of international trade. If so, then creditors should systematically lend more to countries with which they share closer trade links. We develop a simple theoretical model to capture this...

Recent studies, which have attempted to determine what causes an industrial sector in a state to grow, have ignored the general role of the state's economic development agency. We extend the analysis to include its effect, and determine that economic development expenditure by the state is a...