We assess the extent to which fiscal transfers smooth regional shocks in three large federations:the U.S., Canada, and Australia. We find that fiscal transfers offset 4-11 percent of idiosyncratic shocks (risk-sharing) and 13-24 percent of permanent shocks (redistribution). This fiscal insurance...

A growth accounting exercise is conducted for 88 countries for 1960-94 to examine the source of cross-country differences in total factor productivity (TFP) levels. Two differences distinguish this analysis from that of the related literature. First, the critical technology parameter-the share...

A sleepy consensus has emerged that U.S. GNP data are uninformative as to whether trend is better described as deterministic or stochastic. Although the distinction is not critical in some contexts, it is important for point forecasting, because the two models imply very different long-run...

This paper re-examines the issue of the existence of threshold effects in the relationship between inflation and growth, using new econometric techniques that provide appropriate procedures for estimation and inference. The threshold level of inflation above which inflation significantly slows...

The feedback and the autoregressive closed form solution of the consumption function, with the income process allowed to follow a general ARIMA stochastic process, for the quadratic, exponential and Weil's hybrid exponential-isoelastic utility functions are compared. For the exponential and...