This paper provides empirical evidence on the response of labor productivity to the arrival of new inventions. The benchmark measure of technological progress is given by data on patent applications in the U.S. over the period 1889-2002. The analysis shows that labor productivity may temporarily...

This paper investigates the generalized parametric measurement methods of aggregate operational risk in compliance with the regulatory capital standards for operational risk in the New Basel Capital Accord ("Basel II"). Operational risk is commonly defined as the risk of loss resulting from...

This paper aims at clarifying, with the help of a simple formal model and numerical examples, several aspects of the relationship between international investment position (IIP) and balance of payments (BOP) statistics. Exact and approximated relations are compared to analyze the estimation...

Many estimates of early-warning-system (EWS) models of currency crisis have reported incorrect standard errors because of serial correlation in the context of panel probit regressions. This paper documents the magnitude of the problem, proposes and tests a solution, and applies it to previously...

There has been little systematic empirical study on the relationship between remittances and growth. This paper attempts to examine this relationship. Using a newly constructed crosscountry of data series for remittances covering a large sample of developing countries, we relate the interaction...

This paper presents two approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or a permanent phenomenon. The two approaches-the time series behavior of credit outstanding and a two-stage program selection and access...

The paper presents a comparative analysis of macroeconomic dynamics of 18 Arab countries based on a panel vector autogression estimation. Comparing growth performance, fiscal and current account developments in these countries, the study concludes that (1) in the short run, external and...

This is the second of a series of papers that are being written as part of a larger project to estimate a small quarterly Global Projection Model (GPM). The GPM project is designed to improve the toolkit for studying both own-country and cross-country linkages. In this paper, we estimate a small...

Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with...

The paper investigates the growth effects of public capital in Portugal using annual data for the period 1965-95. Both a production function and a vector autoregressive model are estimated. Public capital is shown to be a significant long-term determinant of output growth. The size of the...