The recent empirical literature on the economic effects of terms of trade shocks highlights not only the direct effects on growth, but also the resulting changes in volatility and debt. We link the procyclicality of sovereign debt to terms of trade shocks and provide theoretical underpinnings...

The paper corrects a subtle, but crucial, conceptual flaw in a solution procedure initially proposed in 1990 by Sen and Turnovsky to analyze anticipated regime changes in small open economies based on the intertemporal optimization of rational forward-looking agents. The problem is its failure...

New growth models exhibit "scale effects," meaning that variations in the levels of key variables exert permanent influences on growth rates. Such predictions run counter to recent empirical evidence. In this paper we extend a general non-scale model to the open economy. With complete capital...

This paper explores the relationship between aggregate and relative congestion, returns to scale and economic growth. Aggregate congestion reduces the effective productivity of capital; relative congestion reduces the effective productivity of labour. Both forms of congestion adversely affect...

Neoclassical and endogenous growth models yield strikingly different predictions regarding the determinants of long-run growth rates and their implications for long-run cross-country convergence characteristics. On the one hand, Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) and Barro and Salai-Martin (1995)...

The literature measuring the impact of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) and WTO membership on trade flows has produced remarkably diverse results. Rose''s (2004) seminal paper reports a range of specifications that show no WTO effects, but Subramanian and Wei (2007) contend that he does not...

We develop a general optimal control model of crop thinning applicable to settings in agriculture, horticulture and viticulture. Using a simple optimal control model for the land owner’s profit maximization problem, relevant scenarios are discussed using phase diagram analysis: (1) when the...

International and national investors are often exposed to real wealth risks, stemming from volatile asset prices and inflation uncertainty, making it difficult to stabilize consumption patterns. However, investors can enter futures markets to hedge against these risks. The paper develops a...

The paper analyzes the dynamic effects of a total factor productivity shock and an interest rate risk premium shock in a highly indebted open economy. In contrast to the standard open economy framework, search unemployment and wage bargaining are introduced. We find that a negative total factor...

This paper studies the effect of labor market institutions on the cyclicality of labor productivity and aggregate fluctuations in Italy. It uses a New Keynesian model with labor market frictions and labor effort when two wage bargaining settings (efficient Nash and rightto-manage) interact with...