This note presents results from Granger-causality tests on 22 Asian, Latin American and Caribbean developing economies in an attempt to distinguish between competing hypotheses regarding the role of financial deepening in economic growth. The results suggest that in many cases financial...

This paper examines the evidence of cost efficiencies resulting from hypothetical mergers in the Italian banking market. The approach adopted is similar to that of Shaffer (1992, 1993) where bank mergers are simulated and then total costs are calculated using the hybrid translog methodology for...

Inflation and the level of total factor, capital and labor productivity are integrated of the same order and are cointegrated in each of the G7 countries. The long-run relationship is mainly negative, the magnitude generally small, and there is no strong pattern of Granger causality between...

This note presents results from estimates of the Feldstein and Horioka (1980) investment-saving equation using pooled annual data for 21 OECD economies over the period 1960-94. The results indicate that international capital mobility is substantially higher than suggested by Feldstein and...

Commodity prices and U.K. retail prices do not appear to be cointegrated and short-run movements in commodity prices convey little information about future movements in U.K. retail prices. These findings, which may reflect the shift in final demand away from goods with a high commodity content,...

Recent research using time series cointegration techniques has suggested that fi scal policy in the EU-15 countries may have been on unsustainable path during 1970-2003. However, the time series techniques employed are know to have low power in small samples. The results from employing panel...

This paper asks whether the adoption of fiscal responsibility laws (FRLs) has improved fiscal performance in nine emerging market economies, as measured by developments in their key fiscal balances. Examining these economies alone, their fiscal performance improved on average between the period...

Panel cointegration techniques applied to pooled data for 50 developed and developing economies for the period 1970-2000 indicate that savings and investment are non-stationary and cointegrated, that there are marked differences in saving-retention ratios between different country groups, and...

Simple time series regressions for 37 low-income African countries during 1960--2004 suggest that government consumption is highly procyclical, with consumption responding more than proportionately to fluctuations in output in many cases. The results from a cross-country specification suggest...