Dollarization in Russia increased rapidly during the early 1990s, but failed to come down in the second half of the 1990s in spite of exchange rate stabilization. To explain this "dollarization hysteresis," this paper develops a model in which network externalities in the demand for currency can...

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,...

Applying a general functional form, the Marshall-Lerner condition of the bilateral trade between the US and Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, or Thailand is examined. In deriving the real exchange rate, both the relative consumer price index (CPI) and producer price...

In most policy applications of general equilibrium modeling, cost functions are calibrated to benchmark data. Modelers often choose the functional form for cost functions based on suitability for numerical solution of the model. The data (including elasticities of substitution) determine first...

The paper studies technical inefficiency in the railway systems of ten countries of the European Union. A new approach is used which permits the disaggregation of inefficiency by factor of production to result in estimates of input-specific technical inefficiency. The cost structure is...

This paper models investment/entry decisions in a competitive industry that is subject to a quantity control on an input for production. The quantity control is implemented by auctioning licenses for the restricted input (e.g., a pollution permit or a production license). The paper shows that...