In this article we present an econometric analysis of the relationship between several indicators of economic development and wellbeing in Europe, the United States and Canada. We calculate a compound index of several indicators based on three groups: 1) Life satisfaction and income per capita,...

We investigate country heterogeneity in cross-country growth regressions. In contrast to the previous literature that focuses on low-income countries, this study also highlights growth determinants in high-income (OECD) countries. We introduce Iterative Bayesian Model Averaging (IBMA) to address...

The economic development and growth literature contains extensive discussions on relationships between exports and economic growth. One debate centers on whether countries should promote the export sector to obtain economic growth. An abundant empirical literature on this export-led growth (ELG)...

This paper examines the possible macroeconomic consequences of changes in trend of productivity growth for European countries. Overall the results suggest that a rise in trend factor productivity will lead to higher levels of production and real income, however employment adjustment will depend...

In this paper I try to move away from the Extreme Bounds method of identifying ``robust'' empirical relations in the economic growth literature. Instead of analyzing the extreme bounds of the estimates of the coefficient of a particular variable, I analyze the entire distribution. My claim in...

Bayesian model averaging (BMA) has become widely accepted as a way of accounting for model uncertainty, notably in regression models for identifying the determinants of economic growth. To implement BMA the user must specify a prior distribution in two parts: a prior for the regression...

Economic research has considered Private Debt a determinant of GDP growth for years. By keeping this perspective, the objective of this work is to understand how much of the GDP response to a monetary shock is due to the variation of private debt. This is the marginal contribution of private...

Competition policy in the European Union is built on the principle that the exercise of market power is a source of inefficiency and as such should be prevented or eliminated. According to this doctrine, effective competition exempt from market power is the source of economic growth. Observation...

The key feature of endogenous growth models is that they imply that permanent changes in government policy can have permanent effects on growth rates. In this paper we develop and implement an empirical framework to test this implication. In a regression of growth rates on current and lagged...

This paper examines the robustness of explanatory variables in cross-country economic growth regressions. It employs a novel approach, Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE), which constructs estimates as a weighted average of OLS estimates for every possible combination of included...