We explore the role of government in the nexus of finance and trade starting from the earliest days of organised finance in England and then broadening the analysis to 84 countries from 1960 to 2004. For 18th century England, we find that the government expenditures and international trade did...

This paper argues that the key deep underlying fundamental for the growing international imbalances leading to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system between 1971 and 1973 was rising U.S. inflation since 1965. It was driven in turn by expansionary fiscal and monetary policies--the elephant in...

A simplified model is constructed to analyze the role played by vocational training programs In high schools. The model assumes that there are two kinds of educational programs in high schools, vocational and general. It also assumes that there are two types of jobs for high school graduates....

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample contains 199 separate "program estimates" - estimates of the impact of a particular program on a specific subgroup of participants - drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995...

The length of time from the implementation of an occupational licensing statute (i.e., licensing duration) may matter in influencing labor market outcomes. Adding to or raising the entry barriers are likely easier once an occupation is established and has gained influence in a political...

Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large empirical literature providing an affirmative answer to this question. We argue that methodological problems with the empirical...

For over a century social analysts have debated the connection between trade policy and economic performance. This controversy continues today, even as the world is experiencing an unprecedented period of trade liberalization, and in spite of numerous empirical studies that claim to have found a...