Taking both the enlargement process, as currently defined by the EU, and the structural funds as a given, this Paper examines what is the best way for candidate countries to fuel real convergence. The experience from earlier EU enlargements and current economic conditions within the CEEC10...

I study whether and how US shocks are transmitted to eight Latin American countries. US shocks are identified using the procedure of Canova and De Nicolo’ (2002) and treated as exogenous with respect to Latin American economies. Posterior estimates for individual and average effects are...

We examine monetary policy in the euro area from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We discuss what theory tells us the strategy of Central banks should be and contrasts it with the one employed by the ECB. We review accomplishments (and failures) of monetary policy in the euro area...

This paper investigates the impact of twentieth-century European colonization on African countries. We find that colonization mattered for growth. The following had some beneficial growth effects: being a dependency rather than a colony; being a colony of France or the United Kingdom rather than...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of an inflow of low-skilled workers into an economy where there is capital accumulation, endogenous labour supply and heterogeneous workers. We find substantial dynamic effects, with adjustments that resemble those triggered by a sudden disruption of...

This paper investigates the relationship between time variations in output and inflation dynamics and monetary policy in the US. There are changes in the structural coefficients and in the variance of the structural shocks. The policy rules in the 1970s and 1990s are similar as is the...

This paper examines the question of which shock generates cyclical movements in output and inflation using an alternative approach. We find that in the G-7 countries output cycles are driven by different structural disturbances, that monetary disturbances play a significant role in at least four...

We study the effects of German unification on macroeconomic variables in a model with capital accumulation, skill differences and a welfare state. The integration of two economies differing in capital holdings and skill distribution is similar to a mass migration of low-skilled agents holding no...

This Paper proposes a method to conduct inference in panel VAR models with cross-unit interdependencies and time variations in the coefficients. The set-up used is Bayesian, and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are used to estimate the posterior distribution of the features of interest....

The paper proposes a technique to test jointly for groupings of unknown size in the cross-sectional dimension of a panel and estimates the parameters of each group, applying it to identifying convergence clubs in income per-capita. The approach uses the predictive density of the data,...