This paper investigates the relationship between output volatility and growth using post-war real GDP data for the United States. We expand on recent research by Beaudry and Koop (1993) documenting the asymmetric effect of recessions on output growth. The results presented in this paper suggest...

This essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from centrally planned to market economy in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. We first establish a set of stylized facts of the transition so far, namely: (1) output fell, (2) capital shrank, (3)...

I review the literature on labor's share of national income in developed and developing countries. These shares have varied systematically over the post-World War II period, rising until the late 1970s and then falling until now. Explanations for the decline in labor's share include technical...

How many years will the average transition economy need to reach the income level of the average OECD country? The favored methodology in use to answer such questions is referred to as the BLR approach, because it uses specifications from Barro, and Levine and Renelt. The literature has so far...

This study estimates and tests the endogeneity of the natural rate of growth using the balance-of-payments consistent rate of growth (BPCRG) instead of the actual rate of growth. Our approach is also theoretically compatible with the one proposed by Thirlwall (2001). Following this idea, we...

We study the economic structure of the life of Harry Potter and his co-actors as an economic model that governs the social organization of their economic activities. Our goal is to study and understand the internal consistency of the Potterian economic model and explore the relationships between...

An unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. Among the sources contributing to such instability, much of the blame has been assigned to political issues. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-run relationship between political...

An unstable macroeconomic environment is often regarded as detrimental to economic growth. Among the sources contributing to such instability, much of the blame has been assigned to political issues. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-run relation between political...

Although recent research has repeatedly found a negative association between investment and socio-political instability (SPI), the existence and direction of causality between these two variables has not yet been investigated. We construct an index of SPI for non-overlapping five-year periods...

We study the economic structure of the life of Harry Potter and his co-actors as an economic model that governs the social organization of their economic activities. Our goal is to study and understand the internal consistency of the Potterian economic model and explore the relationships between...