This paper combines a new historical data set regarding capital formation in infrastructure in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century with data-oriented econometric techniques aimed at testing the causal relationship between these infrastructural investments and economic growth. The resulting...

The paper considers a (static) portfolio system that satisfies adding-up contraints and the gross substitution theorem. The paper shows the relationship of the two conditions to the weak dominant diagonal property of the matrix of interest rate elasticities. This enables to investigate the...

Abstract In a great majority of countries throughout the world productive government services have declined as percentage of GDP since the 1970s. In the macroeconomic literature this is often associated with the general productivity growth decline, suggesting an important role for infrastructure...

Abstract We analyse whether central bank independence (CBI) affects inflation in developing countries. For this purpose we have constructed a new data set for the turnover rate (TOR) of central bank governors for a very large sample of countries, which also covers the 1990s. We find that once...

This paper examines whether the pass-through of monetary policy measures in 6 EMU countries has become more similar over time. The countries included are: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, and the sample period is 1980-2000. We conclude that major differences in...

This paper analyses the role of bank lending in the monetary transmission process in Germany. We follow a sectoral approach by distinguishing corporate lending and household lending. We find that banks respond to a monetary contraction by adjusting their securities holdings, rather than reducing...

Often it is maintained that economic freedom may further high levels of economic growth. This paper compares various indicators for economic freedom. It is concluded that although these measures differ somewhat in their coverage, they show similar rankings for the countries covered. Some...

We use real-time annual data on the fiscal balance, government current spending, current revenues and net capital outlays as published at a half yearly frequency in the OECD Economic Outlook for 25 OECD countries. For each fiscal year t we have a number of forecasts, a first release, and...

This paper examines how the analysis of inflation targeting (IT) adoption is affected by the choice of the analyzed period. We test whether country characteristics influence the decision to apply IT differently before and after its adoption, using panel probit models for 60 countries over the...

This paper reviews empirical research on the impact of government capital spending on economic growth. The pros and cons of five different ways to model the relationship between public investment and economic growth are reviewed, while some estimation results are presented for illustrative...