This paper uses highly detailed, quarterly data for five major industrialized economies to estimate the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1 - 2010:Q4. First, estimates on a pre-Great Recession sample of data provide evidence of two key relationships....

Existing results on the contribution of terms of trade and world interest rate shocks to output fluctuations in small open economies range from less than 10% to almost 90%. We argue that an identification problems lies at the heart of these vastly different results. In this paper, we overcome...

We estimate a small-scale, structural general equilibrium model of a small open economy using Bayesian methods. Our main focus is the conduct of monetary policy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K., as measured by nominal interest rate rules. We consider generic Taylor-type rules,...

This paper uses the findings of a very recent major international research collaboration on the impact of federal arrangements on the development of the welfare state to explore the possibilities of progress beyond Europe's present diversity of nation-state welfare standards. These findings -...

This paper analyzes the stabilizing properties of alternative monetary policy regimes. In practice there is a choice between two broad types of monetary policy regimes: a fixed exchange rate regime or a floating exchange rate regime. In this paper I compare exchange rate targeting with different...

We examine the evolution of monetary policy rules in a group of inflation targeting countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom), applying a moment-based estimator in a time-varying parameter model with endogenous regressors. Using this novel flexible framework, our...

This paper analyzes the risks of preference erosion arising from MFN trade liberalization in manufactured products. It focuses on developing countries that receive non-reciprocal preferences in the markets of United States, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia. The paper estimates preference margins...

We analyse the degree of preference utilization in four major importing countries (Australia, Canada, EU and US) and provide evidence that preferences are more widely used than previously thought. For Australia and Canada, we have obtained a new dataset on imports by preferential regime that has...