Reforms often occur in waves, seemingly cascading from country to country. We argue that such reform waves may be driven by informational spillovers: uncertainty about the outcome of reform is reduced by learning from the experience of similar countries. We motivate this hypothesis with a simple...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the Lebanese GDP growth rate over the period 1970- 2019 by estimating two kinds of switching models: The Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) model and the model of the Markov process. These models show, on the one hand, asymmetries in the evolution of GDP...

Among the many explanations of the deep transformational recession in the post-communist economies during the transition from a centrally planned economy to market economy in the 1990s there is one that considers this recession as a statistical fiction: the elimination of “unneeded under a...

The macroeconomic production function is a traditional key element of modern macroeconomics, as is the more recent knowledge production function which explains knowledge/patents by certain input factors such as research, foreign direct investment or international technology spillovers. This...

We propose a multivariate Bayesian state space model to identify potential growth and the output gap consistent with the dynamics of the underlying production sectors of the economy and those of inflation and the labor market. Our approach allows us to decompose economic fluctuations and...

The central point of this paper is that both – internal and external – equilibria ought to be involved in the estimation of potential output. If only the data on inflation, unemployment rate and wages are used for its evaluation, no certainty exists that such a level will correspond to a...