Utilizing a new database of tax rates, tax revenues and tax income-elasticities we contribute to the debate on the effects of …fiscal policyon economic activity in a number of ways. First, using both panelGMM and panel VAR methods, we …find that the effects of tax cuts onGDP growth are...

In a country with high probability of default, higher interest rates may render the currency lessattractive if sovereign default is costly. This paper develops that intuition in a simple model andestimates the effect of changes in interest rates on the exchange rate in Brazil using data from...

This paper provides a new theory of international capital ows. In a frameworkthat integrates factor-proportions-based trade and nancial capital ows, a novel forceemerges: capital tends to ow towards countries that become more specialized incapital-intensive industries. This `composition' eect...

We empirically analyse the appropriateness of indexing emerging market sovereign debt to USreal interest rates. We find that policy-induced exogenous increases in US rates raise default riskin emerging market economies, as hypothesised in the theoretical literature. However, we also findevidence...

This paper shows how a simple modi…fication of estimators based on the RandomEffects principle can preserve the consistency and asymptotic efficiency of the methodin panel data despite non-ignorable persistent heterogeneity driven by correlationsbetween the heterogeneity and the regressors. The...

The `quantity anomalies' that arise from standard international business cycle models are cross-country correlations in consumption being higher than output, and negative comovement in aggregate investment and employment. This paper shows thatincorporating multiple sectors with heterogeneous...

This paper analyses predictions of a simple model of currency crises in which the peg will beabandoned when the currency overvaluation hits a certain threshold, unknown to the agents. Due tolearning about the threshold, some features usually observed in the data and identified with modelswith...

The paper analyzes the existence and impact of …financing constraints as a possiblyserious obstacle to innovation by …firms. Direct measures of fi…nancing constraints areemployed using survey data collected by the Banque de France and Eurostat, whichovercomes the problems with the traditional...

The paper discusses the major identi…fication issue of coherency conditions in LDVmodels with endogeneity and flexible temporal and contemporaneous correlations inthe unobservables. Conditions for coherency as discussed in the existing literatureare reviewed and shown to be rather esoteric. Two...

This paper studies the distribution of the classical t-ratio with datagenerated from distributions with no finite moments and shows how classical testing isaspected by bimodality. A key condition in generating bimodality is independence of theobservations in the underlying data generating...