We propose and implement a framework for characterizing and monitoring the global business cycle. Our framework utilizes high-frequency data, allows us to account for a potentially large amount of missing observations, and is designed to facilitate the updating of global activity estimates as...

This paper studies the linkage between structural coherence and economic growth. Structural coherence is defined as the degree that a country's industrial structure optimally reflects its factor endowment fundamentals. The paper found that at least for the overall capital, the shares of capital...

Workers' remittances are often argued to have a tendency to move countercyclically with the GDP in recipient countries since migrant workers are expected to remit more during down cycles of economic activity back home. Yet, how much to remit is a complex decision involving other factors, and...

The failure of the neoclassical growth model to account for differences in output per worker across countries has suggested that these differences should be driven by cross-country differences in total factor productivity (TFP). This paper discusses various measures of productivity and its...

This paper examines the empirical relationship between trade and total factor productivity (TFP) in South Africa. It uses (i) a time series approach where trade is defined in terms of aggregate outcomes, i.e., as the share of imports plus exports in GDP, and (ii) a cross sectional approach,...

This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external data, and fiscal and financial variables spanning over a century. The constructed indices are used to derive a...

We propose a coherent unified approach to the study of the linkages among economic growth, financial structure, and inequality, bringing together disparate theoretical and empirical literature. That is, we show how to conduct model-based quantitative research on transitional paths. With...

This paper studies stylized business cycle properties of household production in four industrialized countries (Canada, the United States, Germany, and Japan). We employ a dynamic small open economy business cycle model that incorporates a household production sector. We use the model to...

The present paper develops a one-sector aggregate endogenous growth model with intertemporal preference dependence. The resultant model possesses the fundamental property of growth convergence, in the sense that countries with identical parameters regarding technology, preference, and government...