We use available methods for testing macro models to evaluate a model of China over the period from Deng Xiaoping's reforms up until the crisis period. Bayesian ranking methods are heavily influenced by controversial priors on the degree of price/wage rigidity. When the overall models are tested...

We use available methods for testing macro models to evaluate a model of China over the period from Deng Xiaoping's reforms up until the crisis period. Bayesian ranking methods are heavily influenced by controversial priors on the degree of price/wage rigidity. When the overall models are tested...

This paper estimates and tests a new Keynesian small open economy model in the tradition of Christiano, Eichenbaum, and Evans (2005) and Smets and Wouters (2003) using Bayesian estimation techniques on Swedish data. To account for the switch to an inflation targeting regime in 1993 we allow for...

There is a fast growing literature that partially identifies structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) by imposing sign restrictions on the responses of a subset of the endogenous variables to a particular structural shock (sign-restricted SVARs). To date, the methods that have been used are...

"Race-to-the-bottom" deregulation is to be expected when markets operate across the borders of countries that independently choose and enforce labor policies. Less obviously, in pre-crisis EMU reforms of labor market policies were uneven and related to international imbalances. That pattern is...

Lobby groups press for various administrative concessions which are granted at the expense of the rest of society. This paper tries to explain why sometimes the rest of society does not prevent the lobbies from exploiting them while at other times it protests against the injustice. It also...

It has been argued in the literature that interjurisdictional competition forces the public sector to increase its efficiency and thus helps to tame Leviathan governments. The paper addresses this hypothesis by means of a simple tax-competition model with a Leviathan state. It is seen that the...

What determines the enforcement of deregulation reform of business activities? What are the outcomes of deregulation? We address these questions using an episode of a drastic reform in Russia between 2001 and 2004 which liberalized registration, licensing, and inspections. Based on the analysis...

It is commonly observed that international trade negotiations repeatedly fail to achieve outcomes that would appear to satisfy the criteria of efficiency and mutual advantage. It can be argued that this is due principally to the influence of interest groups. This paper develops an analytical...

This Paper shows that over monitoring a partner in the initial phase of a relationship may not be optimal if the goal is to determine loyalty and if the cost of ending the relationship increases over time. This intuition is simple: by monitoring too much we lose the opportunity to learn how the...