This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement...

In spite of the similarities between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab Gulf region (Gulf Cooperation Council states), development policies implemented in these two regions of the world have produced markedly different and even divergent outcomes. While Gulf Cooperation Council states have drawn on...

We compare the performance of a currency board arrangement, inflation targeting, and dollarization in a small open, developing economy with liberalized capital account. We focus explicitly on the transmission of shocks to currency and country risk premia in international financial markets and on...

Previous literature has been occupied with measuring disclosure quality in financial reports and no indication has been provided on how the quality of public announcements could be measured. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodological approach to its measurement and to illustrate...

The NBER Macroeconomics Annual presents pioneering work in macroeconomics by leading academic researchers addressed to a broad audience of public policymakers as well as to the academic community. Each paper is followed by comments and discussion to give a more complete context for the views...

In this paper, we study the returns of emerging market stocks that are included in the MSCI Emerging Markets index, a widely used benchmark for investment funds. Our sample consists of 269 stocks from 24 countries that were added to the index and 262 stocks that were deleted. We find convincing...

We investigate serial correlation, periodic, aperiodic and scaling behavior of eigenmodes, i.e., daily price fluctuation time-series derived from eigenvectors, of correlation matrices of shares listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from January 1993 to December 2002.Periodic, or...

This study examines the return behavior of 15 emerging equity markets for persistent deviations from the fundamental value hypothesis. The duration dependence test shows that rational expectations bubble do not cause deviations from fundamental value in any of the markets. Markov chain test...

Emerging market subsidiaries constitute an increasingly important asset for the innovative activities of multinational corporations (MNCs). This study examines how different types of these subsidiaries may be integrated into global R&D using two essential coordination mechanisms — hierarchical...

Ethiopia has experienced a historically unprecedented increase in inflation, mainly driven by cereal price inflation, which is among the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using monthly data from the past decade, the authors estimate error correction models to identify the relative importance of...