Cross-country observations on the effects of population growth are used to show why differences in rates of growth in working-age population may be a key to understanding differences in economic performance across industrialized countries over the period 1975-1997 versus 1960-1974. In...

This paper proposes an empirical exploration of the possible asymmetric nature of the preferences of central bankers, with respect to inflation and output targets. The idea underlying this work lies in the widespread belief that central bankers interventions - through changes in a short-term...

This paper presents a model of macroeconomic fluctuations driven by agents competing to secure shares in new markets. The resulting fluctuation resemble a gold rush in the sence that they increase economic activity but may be of limited social gain. We use different techniques to evaluate the...

The paper introduces habit persistence in consumption decisions in an infinitely-lived agents monetary model with a cash-in-advance constraint. We show that strong enough habit persistence yields indeterminate equilibria. However, real indeterminacy is not per se sufficient to obtain a liquidity...