We discuss theoretical approaches to study the relationship between the size distribution of a nation's cities and macroeconomic growth. The discussion is based on the hypothesis of the New Growth Theory that inter-personal spillovers of education and skills determine the long-run growth of the...

We build a model in which financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity shock. Households can also invest directly on a financial market if they pay a cost. In equilibrium, the ability of intermediaries to share risk is constrained by the market. This can be...

In this paper, we use a modified concept of Granger-(non)causality in reconsidering the negative correlation between stock returns and inflation known in the literature as stock return-inflation puzzle. Based on the quarterly data for Germany including stock returns, inflation rates and growth...

The paper analyses the recent supply side developments in France, Germany, and Italy by employing a non-parametric approach to estimate potential GDP. The analysis reveals marked heterogeneity among the three countries with regard to the contribution made by labour input. Where similarities can...

Rajan and Zingales (1998) use U.S. Compustat firm data for the 1980s to obtain measures of manufacturing sectors? Dependence on External Finance (DEF). They take any differences in these measures to be structural/technological and thus applicable to other countries. Their joint assumptions about...

With this paper we seek to contribute to the literature on the relation between finance and growth. We argue that most studies in the field fail to measure the quality of financial intermediation but rather resort to using proxies on the size of financial systems. Moreover, cross-country...

This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of income and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is...

This paper presents a novel theoretical and empirical approach to the analysis of long-run economic growth. It shows that most traditional theoretical models share the feature of pair-wise cointegration among the main variables. An augmented Kaldor model is proposed in contrast to the standard...

Several empirical studies are concerned with measuring the effect of currency and current account crises on economic growth. Using different empirical models this paper serves two aspects. It provides an explicit assessment of country specific factors influencing the costs of crises in terms of...