In this paper we investigate the determinants of the dramatic increase in services tradability focusing on the extensive margin of the phenomenon. We use balance sheet and firm-level service trade information over the period 1995-2005 provided by the National Bank of Belgium and we merge it with...

We analyze the aggregate markup of a small-open economy, Belgium, using a firm-level dataset that includes all non-financial, private firms. The dataset covers the period 1980-2016 and merges the annual firm accounts over three periods when firms faced different reporting thresholds for the key...

This paper discusses some of the recent developments in growth theory, doing so from the perspective of a small open economy. After setting out a basic generic model, we show how it may yield two of the key models that have played a prominent role in the recent literature, the endogenous growth...

This paper studies the implications of technical progress through investment-specific technical change in a business cycle model with search and matching frictions and endogenous job destruction. The interaction between the capital formation needed to reap the benefits of an investment-specific...

Anglo-American stock markets are much larger than their continental counterparts. Does investor protection and governance explain these differences? Using UK data, we examine four different forms of intervention which are suppose to promote good governance: takeovers, independent directors,...

This paper presents a comprehensive treatment of the cost-of-capital approach for analyzing the economic impact of tax policy. This approach has provided an intellectual impetus for reforms of capital income taxation in the United States and around the world. The most dramatic example is the Tax...

Motivated by VAR evidence on the risk-taking channel in the US, we develop a New Keynesian model where low levels of the risk-free rate induce banks to grant credit to riskier borrowers. In the model an agency problem between depositors and equity holders incentivizes banks to take excessive...

We estimate the Smets and Wouters (2007) model augmented with the Gertler and Karadi (2011) financial intermediation sector on US data by using real and financial observables. Given the framework of the estimated model, we address the question whether and how standard monetary policy should...

The term premium on nominal long-term bonds in the standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model used in macroeconomics is far too small and stable relative to empirical measures obtained from the data - an example of the "bond premium puzzle." However, in models of endowment...