The impact of international trade, or “openness”, on economic growth is difficult to quantify because of reverse causality. In this paper, I use recent advances in gravity equation estima- tion to generate a geography-based instrument for openness a la Frankel and Romer (1999). In contrast...

This paper discusses the link between financial development and macroeconomic volatility by exploring some of the ways through which financial development may affect business cycle fluctuations. To be specific, we examine whether stock market development exerts an unambiguous effect on...