From its inception, the Penn World Tables (PWT), building on the International Comparisons Program (ICP)of the United Nations, has sought to compare the standard of living of individuals in different countries. That is, the termreal GDP per capitaas reported in the PWT is intended to represent...

The virus that triggered a localized shock in China is now delivering a significant global shock. This study simulates the potential impact of COVID-19 on gross domestic product and trade, using a standard global computable general equilibrium model. It models the shock as underutilization of...

This analysis examines the relationship between nonrenewable resource dependence, economic growth and income inequality. It uses a two-equation system in which the Gini index and GDP per capita are the dependent variables and the stock of nonrenewable resources as a share of national wealth --...

This paper provides up-to-date characterization of the association between trade and GDP comovement -- also called the trade comovement slope -- for 150 countries from 1962 to 2011. The paper shows that trade is significantly linked to more GDP correlation, either directly through bilateral...

Questions about the ultimate size of mineral and energy resource endowments and the degree of fiscal prudence which should be exercised by countries engaged in resource extraction have become central for many developing countries during the recent resource boom. To explore these questions, this...

Since income is the return on wealth, the total wealth of any given country should be on the order of 20 times its gross domestic product. Instead the average observed ratio from the balance sheet accounts of the System of National Accounts is a factor of 2.6 to 6.6, depending on whether natural...

Social accounting matrices (SAMs) are the key data input for computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. After a brief introduction to SAMs, this paper presents a method and related computer program for constructing macro SAMs from cross-country databases. The method is demonstrated in an...

Levels of economic development vary widely within countries in the Americas. This paper argues that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era. Colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country, depending on local conditions. Some activities were...

This paper builds on recent research examining the impact of finance on economic outcomes. Specifically, it asks whether credit extended to households and firms has an impact on the share of exports in gross domestic product and on the trade balance. The analysis finds that although household...

The paper introduces a Bayesian cross-entropy forecast (BCEF) procedure to assess the variance and skewness in density forecasting. The methodology decomposes the variance and skewness of the predictive distribution accounting for the shares of selected risk factors. The method assigns...