This paper views the growth and convergence process of the four Visegrad economies - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - through the lens of the open economy, stochastic neoclassical growth model. We use a unified framework to understand both the long-run convergence path and...

Output growth, investment and the real interest rate in long run evidence tend to be negatively affected by inflation. Theoretically, inflation acts as a human capital tax that decreases output growth and the real interest rate, but increases the investment rate, opposite of evidence. The paper...

Die Griechenland-Krise gibt Anlass, den grundsätzlichen Zusammenhang zwischen Staatsschulden, Zinsen und Wachstum zu untersuchen. Anhand dieser Schuldenmechanik wird deutlich, dass ein hohes nominales Wachstum bei niedrigen Zinsen die sogenannten PIGS-Länder zu Beginn der Währungsunion in...

We review evidence on the Great Moderation together with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level to develop a potential explanation for the decline in aggregate volatility since the 1980s and its consequences. The key elements are declines in firm-level volatility and aggregate...

We construct a measure of the short-term world interest rate using principal component analysis. Drawing on real interest rate data for 18 OECD countries for the period 1985 - 2008, persistent deviations from the world interest rate that cannot be explained by movements in the real exchange rate...

The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscal sustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the increase in stock of public debt/GDP induced by the global recession, to include the perspective that the sustainability of a given public debt/GDP depends on...

The end of the great moderation has profound implications on the assessment of fiscal sustainability. The pertinent issue goes beyond the obvious increase in the stock of public debt/GDP induced by the global recession, to include the neglected perspective that the vulnerabilities associated...

Output growth, investment and the real interest rate are all found empirically to be negatively affected by inflation. But a seeming puzzle arises of opposite Tobin-like inflation effects because theory indicates a negative Tobin effect when investment falls and a positive Tobin effect when the...