Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000) argue that the relation between openness and growth is still an open question. One of the main problems in the assessment of the effect is the endogeneity of the relation. In order to address this issue, this paper applies the identification through heteroskedasticity...

This paper assesses empirically the links among a country's institutions and political environment, its implementation of IMF-supported programs, and macroeconomic performance in a sample of 197 programs approved between 1992 and 2002. We find that a stronger institutional and political...

This paper assesses the effect of constrained trade finance on trade flows in countries undergoing financial and balance of payments crises. Most of the countries that had a major crisis had a significant trade contraction, while trade-related finance declined sharply. However, trade may also be...

Numerous reports have noted that the IMF's medium-term growth projections are overly optimistic, raising questions as to how these can be improved. To this end, we estimate a growth model and examine its out-of-sample forecasting properties relative to those of IMF projections. The model's...

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the role of spousal labor in buffering transitory shocks to husbands' earnings. To measure the amount of the shock that spousal labor absorbs, an instrumented cross-sectional variance decomposition is developed. Using data from the Panel...

This paper examines the impact of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) on trade within the euro area. Using panel data for 22 industrial countries, the analysis estimates the effect of the euro's arrival on area-wide trade compared to bilateral trade flows between other industrial...

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the...

State governments finance their expenditures with multiple tax instruments, so when collections from one source decline, they are typically compensated by greater revenues from other sources. This paper addresses the important question of the extent to which personal and corporate income taxes...

We discuss some challenges presented by trending data in time series econometrics. To the empirical economist there is little guidance from theory about the source of trend behavior and even less guidance about practical formulations. Moreover, recent proximity theorems reveal that trends are...