We study how financial market efficiency affects a measure of diversification of output across industrial sectors borrowed from the portfolio allocation literature. Using data on sector-level value added for a wide cross section of countries and for various levels of disaggregation, we construct...

We explore how fiscal consolidations affect private sector confidence, a possible channel for the fiscal transmission that has received particular attention recently as a result of governments embarking on austerity trajectories in the aftermath of the crisis. Panel regressions based on the...

At present, oil markets appear to be behaving in a fashion similar to that in the late 1970s and early 1980s when oil prices rose sharply over an extended period. Furthermore, like at that time, analysts are split on whether such increases will persist or reverse, and if so by how much. The...

This paper analyses the transmission of financial shocks to the macroeconomy. The role of macro-financial linkages is investigated from an empirical perspective for the euro area as a whole, for individual euro area member countries and for other EU and OECD countries. The following key economic...

In this paper we focus on how an international carbon treaty will influence the exploration of oil in Non-OPEC countries. We present a numerical intertemporal global equilibrium model for the fossil fuel markets. The international oil market is modelled with a cartel (OPEC) and a competitive...

In this study, we investigate the role that some institutional features play in shaping the distribution of wages across a number of OECD countries. While considerable attention has been devoted in recent years to the evolution of earnings inequality and to the analysis of the competing...

We estimate a structural model of OECD countries in which GDP and CO2 emissions are endogenous. We use the estimated model to simulate the price of tradable CO2 permits and the efficiency gains from trade. Our estimated prices are high, relative to previous estimates, and the efficiency gains...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of GovernmentsÕ decisions to sell privatised companies on both international and domestic markets in a sample of 392 privatisations in 42 countries in the 1977-1998 period. Political theories of privatisation find strong support in our analyses: market...

Tourism, being volatile and situation-specific, is responsive to climate change. A cross-section analysis is conducted on destinations of OECD tourists and a factor and regression analysis on holiday activities of Dutch tourists, to find optimal temperatures at travel destination for different...

This paper casts doubt on empirical results based on panel estimations of an "inverted-U" relationship between per capita GDP and pollution. Using a new data set for OECD countries on carbon dioxide emissions for the period 1960-1997, we find that the crucial assumption of homogeneity across...