This paper presents an analysis of time-series data for the countries in the Summers-Heston (1991) data set, in an attempt to ascertain the evidence for or against the export-led growth hypothesis. We find that standard methods of detecting export-led growth using Granger causality tests may...

This paper proposes a Structural Error Correction Model (SECM) that allows concurrent estimation of the structural parameters and analysis of cointegration. We amalgamate the Bayesian methods of Kleibergen and Paap (2002) for analysis of cointegration in the ECM, and the Bayesian methods of...

This paper provides an overview of how labour market analysis can be conducted in the context of VAR-based models. The examples presented here show that these methods are quite flexible, and capable of addressing a wide variety of theoretical and policy-related issues. Specifically, the various...

Recent work by Hamilton, Waggoner and Zha (2004) has demonstrated the importance of identification and normalization in econometric models. In this paper, we use the popular class of two-state Markov switching models to illustrate the consequences of alternative identification schemes for...

In a recent paper, Jeffrey Frankel documents a negative and significant relationship between real interest rates and real commodity prices. This paper demonstrates that Frankel's results are open to question on methodological grounds. First, Frankel did not account for possible unit roots or...

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of using a Markov switching model to measure the synchronization of business cycles. We use a Bayesian, Gibbs sampling approach to estimate a multivariate Markov switching model of GDP growth for several countries. We look for evidence...