This paper analyzes a useful accounting framework that breaks down the current account to twocomponents: a composition effect and a growth effect.We show that past empirical evidence, which stronglysupports the growth effect as the main driver of current account dynamics, is misconceived. The...

This paper provides a new theory of international capital ows. In a frameworkthat integrates factor-proportions-based trade and nancial capital ows, a novel forceemerges: capital tends to ow towards countries that become more specialized incapital-intensive industries. This `composition' eect...

The `quantity anomalies' that arise from standard international business cycle models are cross-country correlations in consumption being higher than output, and negative comovement in aggregate investment and employment. This paper shows thatincorporating multiple sectors with heterogeneous...

Recent research has demonstrated that while government expenditures are countercyclical inmost industrialized countries, they tend to be procyclical in developing countries. We develop adynamic political economy model to explain this phenomenon. In the model, public expendituresprovide insurance...

Utilizing a new database of tax rates, tax revenues and tax income-elasticities we contribute to the debate on the effects of …fiscal policyon economic activity in a number of ways. First, using both panelGMM and panel VAR methods, we …find that the effects of tax cuts onGDP growth are...

Both conventional wisdom and leading academic research view pork barrel spendingas antithetical to responsible policymaking in times of crisis. In this paper we presentan alternative view. When agents are heterogeneous in their ideology and in theirinformation about the economic situation,...

We contribute to the intense debate on the real effects of …fiscal stimuli by showingthat the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key countrycharacteristics, such as the level of development, exchange rate regime, openness totrade, and public indebtedness. Based on a...

A large empirical literature claims that …fiscal policy in developingcountries is procyclical, in contrast to high-income countries where it is countercyclical. Some authors, however, have questioned this …finding because theliterature has typically ignored endogeneity problems. To settle this...