The empirical growth literature has focused on capital accumulation but largely ignored productivity growth. To address this imbalance, we propose a methodology for analyzing productivity convergence based on frontier production functions. We examine whether departures from the frontier are...

A method for analyzing productivity convergence based on frontier production functions is proposed. It is examined whether departures from the frontier - country-level inefficiencies - exhibit long-run relationships and convergence. The method is applied to 1-digit industries of 14 OECD...

This paper develops a wavelet (spectral) approach to test the presence of a unit root in a stochastic process. The wavelet approach is appealing, since it is based directly on the different behavior of the spectra of a unit root process and that of a short memory stationary process. By...

Frequently, seasonal and non-seasonal data (especially macro time series) are observed with noise. For instance, the time series can have irregular abrupt changes and interruptions following as a result of additive or temporary change outliers caused by external circumstances which are...

This paper develops a new methodology that makes use of the factor structure of large dimensional panels to understand the nature of non-stationarity in the data. We refer to it as PANIC - a 'Panel Analysis of Non-stationarity in Idiosyncratic and Common components'. PANIC consists of univariate...

This paper shows through a Monte Carlo analysis the effect of neglecting seasonal deterministics on the seasonal KPSS test. We found that the test is most of the time heavily oversized and not convergent in this case. In addition, Bartlett-type non-parametric correction of error variances did...

In this paper we study the determinants of international migration to Germany, 1967-2000. The empirical literature on macro-economic migration functions usually explains migration flows by a set of explanatory variables such as the income differential, employment rates, and migrations stocks as...