Based on a two-country model it is scrutinized how the structure of the unemployment benefit system affects the consequences of idiosyncratic labor market shocks on real wages and unemployment in other countries. International spillover effects are caused by changes in world real income. The...

Graph of the month Corporatism and changes in the adjusted wage share in GDP and in the unemployment rate (p. 1) Opinion corner Two views on Piketty (by Vladimir Gligorov and Mario Holzner; pp. 2 3) Corporatism and the wage share in Western economies and in CESEE (by Mario Holzner; pp. 4-8 )...

This paper shows that inflation crises may stimulate the accumulation of human kapital. A crucial idea is that high inflation undermines total factor productivity, which makes working and physical capital formation less attractive. If young agents consider high inflation to be temporary, they...

The United Kingdom’s 2005 Article IV Consultation reports that macroeconomic performance has been strong and steady, owing in part to confidence-enhancing policy frameworks and generally sound implementation. The financial system is generally healthy, although a substantial increase in...

The key policy challenge for Turkey in the years ahead will be to enhance and consolidate the advances made since the nation’s 2000-01 economic crisis. Higher growth could reduce unemployment and raise living standards toward European Union levels. This paper reviews Turkey’s...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on the measurement of central bank autonomy. We distinguish inputs that constitute the building blocks in the literature, and the literature that builds on them. Issues including sensitivity analysis, robustness, and endogeneity are discussed. The...

This paper investigates the link between macroeconomic performance and the change in the poverty rate among 47 episodes of growth and 52 episodes of economic downturn in developing and transition economies. We show that, on average, (i) the greater the inequality, the lower the elasticity of...

This paper identifies factors that contribute to a fast recovery in growth after persistent negative terms of trade shocks, using a sample of 159 countries for 1970-2006. The results suggest that policies matter. Fast recoveries are fairly robustly related to real exchange rate depreciation and...

This paper reviews economic stabilization and growth in Portugal during the 1970s. Following a decade of rapid growth with external equilibrium, the Portuguese economy in the early 1970s suffered a series of major shocks. The paper highlights that the problem of managing economic growth with a...

Evidence from English real wages and real land rents for the period 1500-1800 are used to evaluate the impact of temperature and precipitations on under-developed economies. Estimating key parameters of an AK-growth model, we extract Total Factor Productivity (TFP hereafter) shocks and estimate...