One question associated with the business cycle agenda of research is to evaluate if the business cycle of different countries may present similar features despite the differences in institutions, industrial structures, public policies and growth rates that those countries may have. Backus and...

This study explores the productivity performance of the Brazilian economy between 1970 and 1998. We assess how much of the TFP downfall can be explained by some departures from the standard procedure. We incorporate to the standard measure utilization of capacity, changes in the workweek of...

This article has two objectives. The first is to show the impact of distortionary taxes during a period of the economic cycle in Brazil. The second is to show that an explanation for output to grow slower than productivity is the increase in taxes on productive factors: capital and labor. To...

We ask which part of the observed cross-country differences in the level of per capita income can be accounted for by monopoly rights in the labour market.We answer this question in a calibrated growth model with two final goods sectors.The novel feature being that monopoly rights in the...