Analysis of firm-level panel data from three sub-Saharan African economies shows that exporting manufacturers have a total factor productivity premium of 11-28 percent. The data do not allow testing of whether these premiums are caused by selection of more efficient producers into exporting or...

This paper analyzes trade in the Caribbean community (CARICOM) using a gravity model framework. The paper seeks to shed light on the dynamics of trade among CARICOM member countries, as well with the rest of world over 1980–99. Overall, the results show that intra-CARICOM trade has increased,...

The paper provides an empirical investigation of labor market pooling. The analysis concentrates on Italian industrial districts and shows that there is scattered evidence of a widespread wage premium. In particular, there is no evidence of district differentials for the returns to seniority...

We estimate the respective contributions of institutions, geography, and trade in determining cross-country income levels using recently developed instruments for institutions and trade. Our results indicate that the quality of institutions "trumps" everything else. Controlling for institutions,...

We present a descriptive analysis of stylized facts for the German business cycle. We demonstrate that simple ad-hoc instructions for identifying univariate rules characterizing the German business cycle 1955-1994 lead to an error rate comparable to standard multivariate methods.

Graphical modeling as a form of multivariate analysis has turned out to be a capable tool for the detection and modeling of complex dependency structures. Statistical models are related to graphs, in which variables are represented by points and associations between each two of them as lines....

We derive conditions for decomposition and collapsibility of graphical interaction models for multivariate time series. These properties enable us to perform stepwise model selection under certain restrictions. For illustration, we apply the results to a multivariate time series describing the...

This paper discusses two graphical methods for the investigation of local association of two continuous random variables. Often, scalar dependence measures, such as correlation, cannot reflect the complex dependence structure of two variables. However, dependence graphs have the potential to...