This paper proposes a new effect of firing costs on firms' behavior that builds from firms' demand for liquidity. When a time gap exists between production and its associated revenues, firing can become a liquidity adjustment tool that allows firms to increase their short-term liquidity. I refer...

Using the FEER approach we investigate the long-run equilibrium paths of the real effective exchange rates (REERs) of countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). In an attempt to address econometric estimation uncertainty, we employ both single-country (Johansen and ARDL)...

Based on a survey that we designed and that covers a stratified random sample of 12,400 firms in 120 cities in China with firm-level accounting information for 2002-2004, this paper examines the presence of systematic distortions in capital allocation that result in uneven marginal returns to...

This paper has examined Papua New Guinea's historical economic growth patterns through a simple growth accounting framework. The analysis shows that swings in growth are mostly accounted for by a significant slowdown in capital input and lower Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth. It also...

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) is a key source of forecasts of global economic conditions. It is therefore important to review the performance of these forecasts against both actual outcomes and alternative forecasts. This paper conducts a series of statistical tests to evaluate the quality of...

In June 2000 Colombia adopted a new definition of unemployment following the standars of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This change implied a reduction of the unemployment rate of about two (percentage) points. In this paper we contrast the Colombian case with other...

This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external data, and fiscal and financial variables spanning over a century. The constructed indices are used to derive a...

We consider the estimation of a semiparametric additive isotonic regression model with error-prone covariates. We show the limiting distributions of the proposed estimators of the parametric component as well as the functional component. A simulation study is carried out to investigate the...

In this paper, we consider statistical inference for linear regression models when neither the response nor the predictors can be directly observed, but are measured with errors in a multiplicative fashion and distorted as single index models of observable confounding variables. We propose a...

We study partial linear single index models when the response and the covariates in the parametric part are measured with errors and distorted by unknown functions of commonly observable confounding variables, and propose a semiparametric covariate-adjusted estimation procedure. We apply the...