This paper proposes a new approach for analyzing the relationship between macroeconomic factors and the income distribution. The conventional method of analysis is regression of summary inequality indices on variables such as the unemployment and inflation rates. Building on the lessons from...

In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and economic growth/fluctuations. The set-up is a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy, in which two political parties can alternate in power. The party in office chooses...

We investigate the empirical impact of violence as compared to other trade impediments on trade flows. Our analysis is based on a panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 1999, which brings together information from the Rose [2004] dataset, the ITERATE dataset for...

This paper presents an analysis of the effect of bureaucratic corruption on economic growth through a public finance transmission channel. At the theoretical level, we develop a simple dynamic general equilibrium model in which financial intermediaries make portfolio decisions on behalf of...

This paper formulates a dynamic Random Coefficient Model (RCM) to consider a set of popular determinants of public deficits in the EU-15 over the period 1971-2006, both at a country-specific level and from a population-wide perspective. Although the extent of government deficits and debt has...

Despite the significant academic interest in the economic cohesion, the various aspects of convergence and the ways they can be measured still remain theoretically unclear. These are issues of extreme political significance, especially for countries aspiring for EU and euro area membership. The...

Usually the higher Government Debt country borrows money from other countries having lower Government Debt. This will end up with a higher lending rate in all countries. So, the spillover of a high debt problem in one country will cause pressures for higher interest rates in all remaining...

The Job Guarantee (Mosler 1997-8, Mitchell and Muysken 2008, Wray 1998; hereafter, JG) is a policy proposal designed as an alternative to the neoclassical natural rate of unemployment or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). Whereas that approach presumes that some positive...

This paper investigates the effects of public investment in infrastructure on private output for Germany. Using a multivariate framework we explore the impact of a diverging selection of variables on the ensuing estimates and document confidence intervals computed following the bootstrap...