In the identified VAR literature the role of the exchange rate in measuring monetary policy shocks has often been neglected. However, many open economies find it useful to target the exchange rate. In such a regime exchange rate innovations will better capture domestic monetary policy shocks....

Estimates of cyclically-adjusted budget balances, correcting actual government budget balances for business cycle fluctuations, are produced by many institutions. This paper presents an alternative approach for the cyclical adjustment of budget balances. The approach is based on a disaggregated...

We augment a Schumpeterian growth model with a public basic-research sector to examine how much a country should invest in basic research. We find that the closer the country is to the world’s technological frontier the more the government should invest in basic research. Basic-research...

Vote-buying is widely used by parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. We examine the impact of vote-buying on growth. We consider a model with a poverty trap where redistribution can promote growth. We show that vote-buying contributes to the persistence of poverty...

In this paper we study the incentives for basic-research investments by governments in a globalized world. For this purpose, we develop a two-country Schumpeterian growth model in which each country chooses its basic-research investments. We find that a country's basic-research investments...