Discount rate changes always receive considerable attention in financial markets. Two hypotheses compete to explain financial market reactions: the direct ‘borrowing cost effect’ and the announcement effect. This paper examines the issue for the Bundesbank’s discount rate changes after...

Résume : Dans cet article nous avons étudié le lien entre le développement financier et la croissance dans les pays en développement (PVD) en tenant compte de la spécificité des pays d’Afrique subsaharienne. Sur un échantillon de 64 pays en développement (dont 25 d’Afrique...

This book focuses on general theory of price. Price, wage, interest rate, GNP and exchange rate, five factors, are very important not only in economics and economical activity, but also in social and political life. Those five factors are concrete, but also abstract. They belong to different...

This paper asks two questions. First, can we explain Japan's ongoing financial crisis by means of an institutional analysis similar to the one Hyman P. Minsky applied to the U.S. economy during the postwar period? Second, what are the implications of this analysis for what is going on in the...

Business cycle statistics differ widely across countries, especially for trade-related variables. Part of these variations relates to the size of the economies and to their distance from each other. This paper asks whether a three-country model is able to display the marked diversity of business...

Over the past decade, a large body of theoretical and empirical research has considered the importance of the quantity of public capital for economic growth. For the most part, the empirical results point to a positive role for public capital in determining steady state levels of output per...

In this paper, the authors discuss Minsky's analysis of the evolution of one variety of capitalism-financial capitalism-which developed at the end of the nineteenth century and was the dominant form of capitalism in the developed countries after World War II. Minsky's approach, like those of...

Empirically R&D expenditure moves pro-cyclically, but the pro- cyclicality is a puzzle from the Schumpeterian point of view. The paper examines the cyclical property of R&D expenditure in the context of endogenous growth, and concludes that (i) substitutability between investing in physical...

Exchange-rate-based stabilisations, even if successful, usually lack credibility initially. This is reflected in high (ex post) real interest rates and some degree of real exchange rate appreciation. Empirical observation suggests that wage inflation declines smoothly over time whilst interest...

Fundamental changes in labor market patterns among U.S. prime-age men over the past two decades have been the focus of numerous recent research studies and media accounts. Increases in wage inequality and in male joblessness are the most important of these changes; assertions of an increase in...