This paper shows that an increase in corporate/labor/income tax rates may push an economy with tax evasion into an expansionary pattern, under increasing returns to scale. These effects would be reversed when the steady state is saddle-path stable. This model does not undertake a full...

The gravity model has been extensively used in international trade research for the last 40 years because of its considerable empirical robustness and explanatory power. Since their introduction in the 1960's, gravity models have been used for assessing trade policy implications and,...

In economies where the price of labour is determined outside of competitive markets the question arises as to whether the observed evolution of wages is likely to contribute to a decline in unemployment. I develop and discuss a benchmark, the neutral wage policy, to which the actual evolution of...

The temporal interdependence between health expenditure and economic growth has been the focus in a number of recent empirical studies. While some insights have been gained from these studies, the focus has been on national economies, either in developed or developing countries. This paper...

Health system efficiency is a major target of health policy but its conceptualization and measurement are still a problem in health economics. Because health status is influenced by many factors outside the health system, I argue that measurements of health system efficiency should focus on the...

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the evidence on the excess smoothness of consumption within the permanent income model, by using recently available monthly data. Two formulations of the univariate process of personal disposable income are adopted: in the levels and in the log-levels....

Monetary policy contributes to stabilize growth. Particularly in a reforming context for financial and economic activities, it is important to know how central bankers' decisions through the short term interest rate of the money market are transmitted to the real variables: the GDP and the...

This paper assesses whether the linkages between R&D, human capital and productivity growth in a panel of EU manufacturing industries over the period 1980-2002 are affected by a critical level of human capital. To employ our data in an efficient manner, the study makes use of a dynamic...

Some researchers, for example, Koop [1], and Sims [2], have advocated for Bayesian alternatives to unit-root testing over the classical approach using the augmented Dickey-Fuller test (ADF). This paper studies the power of what Koop [1] has called the Objectiveʺ Bayesian approach to unit-root...

We empirically examine how the decision to purchase private health insurance and hospitalization are made based on labor income, socio-demographic factors, and private health insurance. The increase in household labor income and wealth has a positive effect on purchasing private health...