There is a lively debate on the persistence of the current banking crisis' impact on GDP. Impulse Response Functions (IRF) estimated by Cerra and Saxena (2008) suggest that the effects of earlier crises were long-lasting. We show that standard estimates of IRFs are highly sensitive to...

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers_new, which is the convention in theeconomics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose lastname initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been afirst author more...

Using meta-analytical techniques, we focus on 11 studies that explicitly measure the effect of a net migration variable in neoclassical convergence models and derive 57 comparable effect sizes. The data suggest that an increase in the net migration rate of one percentage point increases on...

We estimate the impulse response function (IRF) of GDP toa banking crisis, applying an extension of the local projectionsmethod developed in Jorda (2005). This method is shown to bemore robust to misspecification than calculating IRFs analytically. However, it suffers from a hitherto unnoticed...

Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return) have been hard to reconcile with micro evidence on the private return to schooling. We present a simple explanation combining two ideas: imperfect substitution and endogenous skill-biased technological progress and use cross-country...

This paper analyzes the influence of the shadow economy on corruption and vice versa. We hypothesize that corruption and shadow economy are substitutes in high income countries while they are complements in low income countries. The hypotheses are tested for a crosssection of 120 countries and a...

It is widely believed that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has grossly fallen short of high expectations raised by the Bush administration in 2002. From the perspective of potential recipient countries, the crucial issue is whether the MCC increased the overall pool of aid resources...