We build and estimate a two-sector (goods and services) dynamic general equilibrium model with two types of inventories: finished goods (output) inventories yield utility services while materials (input) inventories facilitate the production of goods. The model, which contains neutral and...

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the recent empirical contributions that use cross-country data to study the effect of product market regulation and reform on a country’s macroeconomic performance. After a review of the theoretical literature and of relevant...

In this paper we investigate whether financial liberalization improves the efficiency with which investment funds are allocated. We develop a simple measure of efficiency and apply it to firm level panel data for Indonesia and Ecuador. We find evidence that financial liberalization has indeed...

In this paper we develop a switching regression model of investment, in which the probability of a firm being financially constrained is endogenously determined. This approach allows one to address the potential problem of static and dynamic misclassification encountered where firms are sorted...

This paper contains a detailed empirical investigation of the effect of local banking development on firms' innovative activities, using a rich data set on innovation at the firm level for a large number of Italian firms over the 90's. There is evidence that banking development affects the...

We present evidence that an increase in investment as a share of GDP predicts a higher growth rate of output per worker, not only temporarily, but also in the steady state. These results are found using pooled annual data for a large panel of countries, using pooled data for non-overlapping...

Has financial liberalization improved the efficiency with which investment funds are allocated to competing uses? In this paper, we address this question, using firm level panel data from twelve developing countries. The basic idea is to investigate whether financial liberalization has increased...

We show how to relate the welfare of a country's infinitely-lived representative consumer to observable aggregate data. To a first order, welfare is summarized by total factor productivity and by the capital stock per capita. These variables suffice to calculate welfare changes within a country,...