This work develops an early warning system framework for assessing systemic risks and for predicting systemic events, i.e. periods of extreme financial instability with potential real costs, over the short horizon of six quarters and the long horizon of twelve quarters on the panel of 14...

National borders reduce trade, but most estimates of the border effect seem puzzlingly large. We show that major methodological innovations of the last decade combine to shrink the border effect to a one-third reduction in international trade flows worldwide. The border effect varies across...

The voluminous empirical research on horizontal productivity spillovers from foreign investors to domestic firms has yielded mixed results. In this paper, we collect 1,205 estimates of horizontal spillovers from the literature and examine which factors influence spillover magnitude. To identify...

Using a panel of 40 EU and OECD countries for the period 1970-2010 we construct an early warning system. The system consists of a discrete and a continuous model. In the discrete model, we collect an extensive database of various types of economic crises called CDEC 40-40 and examine potential...

We analyze and quantify the determinants of asymmetric shocks showing up in the form of medium-term real exchange rate (RER) changes. First, we discuss sources of asymmetric shocks causing exchange rate variability and the role of the RER as a shock generator. Second, we use data for 21 advanced...

This paper evaluates the impact of structural reforms, mainly liberalization and privatization, on economic growth. To provide stylized facts on how such reforms worked in the past, we quantitatively review 60 studies that estimate the relation between reforms and growth empirically. These...

The abundant literature on the competing motives for holding international reserves stresses different factors, giving rise to a problem called model uncertainty. In this paper we search for the most important determinants of reserve holdings using data for 104 countries in 1999–2010 and...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel look at the evolution of inflation dynamics in selected Central European (CE) countries. We use the lens of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) nested within a time-varying framework. Exploiting a time-varying regression model with stochastic...

We collect 2,735 estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption from 169 published studies that cover 104 countries during different time periods. The estimates vary substantially from country to country, even after controlling for 30 aspects of study design. Our...