This paper develops a model that integrates the climate and the global economy---an integrated assessment model---with which different policy scenarios can be analyzed and compared. The model is a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium setup with a continuum of regions. Thus, it is a full...

I examine whether civil conflict is triggered by transitory negative economic shocks. My approach follows Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004) in using rainfall as an exogenous source of economic shocks in Sub-Saharan African countries. The main difference is that my empirical specifications...

Are civil wars partly caused by low economic growth? And do democratic institutions attenuate the impact of low growth on the likelihood of civil war? Our approach to answering these questions exploits that international commodity prices have a significant effect on income growth in Sub-Saharan...

A hallmark of modern labour economics is the close interplay between the development of theory, data sources and econometric testing. The evolution of the economic analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) provides a good illustration. The economics of UI has been a very active research area over...

This lecture is about how best to evaluate economic theories in macroeconomics and finance, and the lessons that can be learned from the past use and misuse of evidence. It is argued that all macro/finance models are `false' so should not be judged solely on the realism of their assumptions. The...

A fruitful emerging literature reveals that shocks to uncertainty can explain asset returns, business cycles and financial crises. The literature equates uncertainty shocks with changes in the variance of an innovation whose distribution is common knowledge. But how do such shocks arise? This...

The downturn in the world economy following the global banking crisis has left the Chinese economy relatively unscathed. This paper develops a model of the Chinese economy using a DSGE framework with a banking sector to shed light on this episode. It differs from other applications in the use of...

This paper is concerned with methods for analysing spatial data. After initial discussion on the nature of spatial data, including the concept of randomness, we focus most of our attention on linear regression models that involve interactions between agents across space. The introduction of...

This paper gives money a role in providing cheap collateral in a model of banking; this means that, besides the Taylor Rule, monetary policy can affect the risk-premium on bank lending to firms by varying the supply of M0 in open market operations, so that even when the zero bound prevails...

There has recently been a rapid expansion of interest in the econometrics of summative program evaluation, both within Australia and around the world. We provide a review of the key issue and recent developments in this field. A central feature of recent developments is the attempt to allow for...