This paper examines the performance of alternative models for predicting turning points in the UK growth cycle. The models are based upon an interpretation of movements in the CSO's composite longer and shorter leading indicators. The difference between the models lies in the choice of method...

In the evolving debate and analysis of global imbalances, a commonly overlooked issue pertains to rising protectionism. This paper attempts to fill that gap, examining the macroeconomic implications of trade policy changes through the lens of a dynamic general equilibrium model of the world...

The remarkable economic success of the United States in the 1990s led many observers to talk about a ‘New Economy’. This Paper provides an overview of the main issues, including faster productivity growth, the stability of inflation despite very low unemployment, the greater overall economic...

The extreme levels of stock price volatility found during the Great Depression have often been attributed to political uncertainty. This Paper performs an explicit test of the Merton/Schwert hypothesis that doubts about the survival of the capitalist system were partly responsible. It does so by...

We develop a five-region version (Canada, a group of oil exporting countries, the United States, emerging Asia and Japan plus the euro area) of the Global Economy Model (GEM) encompassing production and trade of crude oil, and use it to study the international transmission mechanism of shocks...

This paper reviews the background and key policy challenges of the current situation of the Spanish economy. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of Spain’s recent long growth cycle, the real and financial imbalances accumulated towards its end, and the troubles faced at the current...

How does trade policy a affect technology adoption, total factor productivity (TFP henceforth), and per capita income? To study this question we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy in which a coalition of skilled workers chooses the technology. We obtain three...

We study how complementarities and intellectual property rights affect the management of knowledge workers. The main results relay when a firm will wish to sue workers that leave with innovative ideas, and the effects of complementary assets on wages and on worker initiative. We argue that firms...

Convergence in per capita income turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. Global spillovers favour convergence, while a geographically limited scope of knowledge diffusion can lead to regional clusters of countries with persistently different levels of income per...

It is well known that if there are mild sector-specific externalities, then the steady state of the standard two-sector real business cycle model can become locally indeterminate and endogenous business cycles can arise. We show that this result is not robust to the introduction of standard...