In this article we re-examine the long-run sustainability of US budget deficits, using Bai and Perron's multiple structural change approach. While the deficit would have been weakly sustainable over the full sample (1947:1-2005:3), strong sustainability would appear only between January 1982 and...

The authors analyze the nature of economic shocks hitting European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member countries from 1991 to 2004, as well as for two sub-periods before and after the launch of EMU. To this end, they first evaluate the relative importance of symmetric versus asymmetric...

In this paper, we propose a new methodology for the assessment of EU’s regional policies, making use of the HERMIN macro econometric model. A major feature of our approach is that allows us to compare the actual evolution of the economy under analysis, with and without European funds, so that...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the optimal endowments of public investment in Spanish regions. Starting from the standard dynamic neoclassical model, augmented with the public capital stock, the optimal condition for the provision of public capital would be that, in the steady state, the...

The massive increase in foreign direct investment inflows following the Spanish integration with the now European Union in 1986, has been one of the most important features shaping the behaviour of the Spanish economy in the last twenty years. In this paper we will try to provide an assessment...

In this paper we analyze the nature of the shocks hitting the EMU member countries over the period 1991-2004, as well as for the two subperiods before and after 1999, i.e., the start of EMU. To this end, we first evaluate the relative importance of symmetric vs. asymmetric shocks, and then...

Following Aschauer's (1989) influential contribution, the role of public investment has been stressed as a crucial factor leading to higher private capital productivity, which would lead in turn to higher growth rates. According to this author, the decline in productivity growth experienced by...

In this article, we provide a test of the sustainability of external imbalances in the OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2007, i.e., before the beginning of the international financial crisis. Specifically, we deal with the case of those countries that have experienced current account...