We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness...

Climate change may intensify tropical cyclone activities and amplify their negative economic effects. We simulate the direct economic impact of tropical cyclones enhanced by climate change with the integrated assessment model FUND 3.4. The results show that in the base case, the direct economic...

Multi-gas approaches to climate change policies require a metric establishing equivalences among emissions of various species. Climate scientists and economists have proposed four classes of such metrics and debated their relative merits. We present a unifying framework that clarifies the...

This paper discusses the issue whether developing countries forego chances in world manufactured markets by protecting intermediate services against market entry of new suppliers. By scanning the empirical literature on effective rates of protection (ERP), the evidence is supportive. Yet, it...

This study utilizes the dynamic factor model of Giannone et al. (2008) in order to make now-/forecasts of GDP quarter-on-quarter growth rates in Switzerland. It also assesses the informational content of macroeconomic data releases for forecasting of the Swiss GDP. We find that the factor model...

This paper introduces new data on the term in office of central bank governors in 137 countries for 1970-2004. Our panel models show that the probability that a central bank governor is replaced in a particular year is positively related to the share of the term in office elapsed, political and...

The paper investigates whether the impact of regulations on entrepreneurship depends on corruption. We first test whether regulations robustly deter firm entry into the markets. Our results show that some regulations are indeed important determinants of entrepreneurial activity. Specifically,...