The majority of households across emerging market economies are excluded from the financial markets and cannot smooth consumption. I analyze the implications of this for optimal monetary policy and the corresponding choice of domestic versus external nominal anchor in a small open economy...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

Theoretical models of growth reveal that either exogenous or endogenous, technology is the main driving force behind the long-run economic growth. Furthermore, in the endogenous growth framework, diffusion of technology is the basic mechanism of per capita income convergence among countries....

We analyze the medium- and long-run effects of international integration of capital markets on specialization patterns of countries. For that purpose, we incorporate induced technical change into a Heckscher-Ohlin model with a continuum of final goods. This provides a comprehensive theory that...

This paper uses an overlapping generations model with international labor mobility and a politically responsive fiscal policy to examine aging in developed and developing regions. Migrant workers change the political structure composed of young and elderly voters in both labor-receiving and...

We examine whether an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) flows necessarily increases international technology transfer (ITT). The answer to this question depends on whether FDI is the sole channel of ITT or whether other channels of ITT such as imitation are present for the host...

We study the role of increased outsourcing of production to a low wage country on relative wages across countries and innovation incentives. In particular, we examine the following causal forces behind an increase in the extent of international outsourcing: 1) a reduction in the resource...

This paper aims at uncovering the different channels through which de facto-financial openness affects economic growth and its components. The results herein indicate that de facto measures of financial openness (as proxied by different types of capital inflows) stimulate economic growth. In...

Global knowledge spillovers allow backward countries to catch up by accumulating knowledge faster than leading countries. International growth differentials will fall as diminishing returns with respect to the national knowledge stock apply. The domestic growth rat e will finally equal the...

This paper is motivated by a set of cross-country observations on economic growth, structural transformation, and investment rates in a large sample of countries, We observe a hump-shaped relationship between a country’s investment rate and its level of development, both within countries over...