Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification – this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...

We use a unique dataset of bond downgrades from a niche rating company that has been found to be reacting faster to publicly available information than its competitors. Using regime-switching models we propose risk measures to quantify stock return disturbances (distress costs) associated with...

The rapidly growing literature on the relationship between energy consumption and economicgrowth has not univocally identi…ed the ‘real’causal relationship yet. We argue that bivariate mod-els, which analyze the causality at the level of the total economy, are not appropriate — especiallyin...

We consider an artificial population of forward looking heterogeneous agents making decisions between schooling, employment, employment with training and household production, according to a behavioral model calibrated to a large set of stylized facts. Some of these agents are subject to policy...

In this papaer, we put DSGE forecasts in competition with factor forecasts. We focus on these two models since they represent nicely the two opposing forecasting philosophies. The DSGE model on the one hand has a strong theoretical economic background; the factor model on the other hand is mainly...

This paper compares the welfare under two standard alternative exchange rate regimes, fixed andflexible, in a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium two-country setting. Conventional wisdomholds that countries often prefer low exchange-rate variability to stabilize trade. This may explainthe...

According to the Balassa-Samuelson e¤ect, productivity gains in the domestic tradable sectorraise the relative price of domestic non-tradables causing deviations from the purchasing powerparity. In the literature, the Balassa-Samuelson e¤ect is typically invoked to explain the Penne¤ect,...

I document that emerging markets have cast off their “original sin” – their external liabilitiesare no longer dominated by foreign-currency debt and have instead shifted sharply towardsdirect investment and portfolio equity. Their external assets are increasingly concentrated inforeign...

This paper develops a fully-endogenous, variety-expansion growth model with firm-specific quality heterogeneity, limit pricing, and an endogenous distribution of markups.Trade induces only firms with high-quality products to export, whereas firms with low-quality products serve only the domestic...

The financial crisis has re-ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalizationand its implications for growth, especially for developing countries. The empirical literaturehas not been able to conclusively establish the presumed growth benefits of financialintegration. Indeed,...