Australia’s statistics are of a high quality. Based on the review of its statistical practices, a set of recommendations is presented designed to increase its adherence to internationally accepted statistical practices. The aim of the review is to enhance the usefulness of...

This paper provides a framework for understanding trade patterns in the Mashreq. An augmented gravity model is used to compare actual with expected levels of trade. Trade barriers, political uncertainty, and over-appreciation of domestic currencies seem to explain low levels of international...

There are 22 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. Some target the money supply or the inflation rate; others practice "managed floating." Statistical analysis on monthly data for the past decade reveals that in most cases these exchange rate regimes...

In weak intellectual property rights (IPR) environments, the imitation of proprietary technology by domestic firms has become a deterrent for foreign investment. Different multinationals may view this deterrent differently. This paper develops a model where firms with more technology are less...

This paper finds that the estimates of Armington elasticities (the elasticity of substitution between groups of products identified by country of origin) obtained from multilateral trade data can differ from those obtained from bilateral trade data. In particular, the former tends to be higher...

We explore the relationship between banking sector performance and the quality of regulation and supervision as measured by compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP). Using BCP assessment results for 65 countries and 1998-2002 panel data for other...

The empirical analysis in "International R&D Spillovers" (Coe and Helpman, 1995) is first revisited by applying modern panel cointegration estimation techniques to an expanded data set that we have constructed for the purpose of this study. The new estimates confirm the key results reported in...

The paper evaluates how increases in banks’ and nonfinancial corporates’ default risk are transmitted in the global economy, using in a vector autoregression model for 30 advanced and emerging economies for the period from January 1996 to December 2008. The results point to two-way...

The 2005 International Comparison Program's (ICP) estimates of economy-wide purchasing power parity (PPP) are based on parity estimates for 155 basic expenditure headings, mainly estimated using country product dummy (CPD) regressions. The estimates are potentially inefficient and open to...