One of the most outstanding accomplishments of the economic science over the last decades is the development of a sound and coherent theory of economic growth. Research in growth theory has demonstrated that significant and systematic increases in well-being are attainable whenever the right...

Traditionally, observed fluctuations in aggregate economic time series have been mainly modelled as being the result of exogenous disturbances. A better understanding of macroeconomic phenomena, however, surely requires looking directly at the relations between variables that may trigger...