We investigate the effect of R&D subsidies on firms’ innovation by ownership, industry, and firm size using German firm-level data. The impact of R&D subsidies is heterogeneous across industries for multinational corporations (MNCs) and domestic firms while it does not differ substantially by...

The debate among economists about an optimal growth recipe has been the subject of competing 'narratives.' We identify four major growth narratives using the text analytics of IMF country reports over 1978-2019. The narrative 'Economic Structure'-services, manufacturing, and agriculture-has been...

We study the dynamics of U.S. public debt in a parsimonious VAR. We find that including debt feedback ensures the stationarity of debt while standard VARs excluding debt may imply an explosive debt path. We also find that the response of debt to inflation or interest shocks is not robust and...

We study how macroeconomic shocks affect U.S. public debt dynamics using a VAR with debt feedback. Following a fiscal austerity shock, the debt ratio initially declines and then returns to its pre-shock path. Yet, the effect is not statistically significant. In a weak economic environment, the...

The paper presents evidence that the contribution of differences in total factor productivity (TFP) to income differences across countries steadily increased between 1970 and 2000. We verify that our finding is neither imputable to measurement errors in input factors nor dependent on the...

Oil exporters have run large current account surpluses. We explore oil exporters'' role in our understanding and the resolution of global imbalances. Current account dynamics are estimated for oil-exporting countries and the rest of the world. We find that fiscal policy has a much stronger...