This paper tests the proposition that fiscal transparency, measured by a newly constructed data on budget openness, can be a powerful control on corruption. This result is robust to the choice of index of corruption, conditioning variables, country sample, exclusion of outliers, and the use of...

We study affiliations for the countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with Germany and the US, using various business cycle measures derived from quarterly real GDP. These measures are Hodrick-Prescott and Baxter-King filtered series, together with annual and quarterly growth...

This paper extends the literature on economic growth and demographic change by developing a neo-classical model of endogenous growth in which both economic and demographic outcomes are jointly determined. The key point in this model is the endogenisation of child mortality rate by linking it to...

This paper empirically models the relationship between quarterly business cycle movements in the US and the other G7 countries, including an analysis of the US with a European (E15) aggregate. By using a nonlinear smooth transition vector autoregressive framework, the possibility of asymmetric...

This paper discusses recent research at the Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research on the prediction of the expansion and recession phases of the business cycle for the UK, US, Germany, France and Italy. Financial variables are important predictors in these models, with the stock market...

This paper proposes that Colonialism is a major explanation behind today’s differences in Income Inequality among countries. We argue that colonies that received an important number of European settlers were characterized by a concentration of economic and political power in the hands of these...

Economic development and bureaucratic corruption are determined jointly in a dynamic general equilibrium model of growth, bribery and tax evasion. Corruption arises from the incentives of public and private agents to conspire in the concealment of information from the government. These...

The performance of alternative fiscal rules is examined in an endogenous growth model with public capital and debt. In addition to investing in infrastructure, the government spends on maintenance and health. Infrastructure affects the production of both commodities and health services. The...

This paper empirically analyses real per capita GDP growth for six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela) in terms of real exchange rate depreciations, inflation and US interest rates, focussing on the role of the real exchange rate. We find evidence of...

This study examines the properties of monthly CPI inflation in G7 countries and the Euro area (aggregate) over the period 1973-2007 using a new iterative decomposition procedure that separates changes in mean, seasonal and dynamic components together with conditional volatility. We uncover mean...