This paper proposes an empirical exploration of the possible asymmetric nature of the preferences of central bankers, with respect to inflation and output targets. The idea underlying this work lies in the widespread belief that central bankers interventions - through changes in a short-term...

This paper presents a model of macroeconomic fluctuations driven by agents competing to secure shares in new markets. The resulting fluctuation resemble a gold rush in the sence that they increase economic activity but may be of limited social gain. We use different techniques to evaluate the...

We evaluate and qualify Friedman's, 1953, “case for flexible exchange rates†in the presence of sticky prices in a two country model. We find that a flexible regime performs indeed better when the degree of nominal price rigidity is high while a bilateral peg does better when prices...

In an optimal growth model with a time-to-build delay, the feasibility condition is a delayed-differential equation, and the Euler-type condition is an advanced-differential equation. As in Kalecki's theory of business cycles, the delayed nature of the feasibility constraint naturally induces...

Why have some countries done so much better than others over the recent past? In order to shed new light on this issue, this paper provides a decomposition of the change in the distribution of output-per-worker across countries over the period 1960-98. The main finding of the paper is that most...