The demand for environmental quality is often presumed to be low in developing countries due to poverty. Less attention has been paid to the possibility that lack of awareness about the adverse health effects of environmental pollution could also keep the demand low. We use a household survey...

Several recent papers conclude that US real GDP is trend stationary, implying that all shocks are transitory and the long run path is deterministic.

This paper analyzes a small open economy Ramsey growth model with convex investment costs and a collateral constraint on borrowing. Optimal control methods are used to characterize the dynamics of investment, consumption, and debt. The analysis demonstrates that the economy’s adjustment speed...

The study of bank interest rate spreads is central to our understanding of the process of financial intermediation. Data limitations generally restrict empirical analyses to interest rate spreads that are constructed from bank income statements and balance sheets. In this paper we make use of a...

The class of growth models that incorporate nonrivalry and/or externalities implies that the size (scale) of an economy influences its growth rate. Ample empirical evidence exists to suggest that such implied scale effects are counter-factual. The objective of this paper is to develop a general...

Many researchers believe that the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition leads to permanent and transitory components whose shocks are perfectly negatively correlated. Indeed, some even consider it to be a property of the decomposition. We demonstrate that the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition does not...