Persistent differences in interest rates across countries account for much of the profitability of currency carry trade strategies. "Commodity currencies'' tend to have high interest rates while low interest rate currencies belong to exporters of finished goods. This pattern arises in a...

Trade growth for a relatively poor country is thought to shift the composition of industrial output towards dirtier products, aggravating environmental damage. China's rapidly growing trade and serious environmental degradation appear to be no exception. However, much of China's trade growth is...

We investigate and compare countries' export growth based on their performance at the extensive and intensive export margins. Our empirical approach is motivated by an extension to the Melitz (2003) model of heterogeneous firms in which exporters are subject to a one-time sunk cost and also a...

An increase in the household debt to GDP ratio in the medium run predicts lower subsequent GDP growth, higher unemployment, and negative growth forecasting errors in a panel of 30 countries from 1960 to 2012. Consistent with the “credit supply hypothesis,” we show that low mortgage spreads...

We examine the cross-country dispersion in fiscal outcomes during 2007-2009. In principle, international differences in fiscal policy may be related to differences in optimal fiscal positions, funding constraints, political economy factors and fiscal control problems. We find that the decline in...

This paper draws on household survey data from countries of all income levels to measure how average unemployment rates vary with income per capita. We document that unemployment is increasing with GDP per capita. Furthermore, we show that this fact is accounted for almost entirely by...

Wolfgang Böhmer, Ministerpräsident des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, weist darauf hin, dass von allen Bundesländern Sachsen-Anhalt wohl am stärksten vom wirtschaftlichen Umbruch nach der Wende betroffen war, da die beiden dominierenden Industriezweige - der Schwermaschinen- und Anlagenbau sowie die...

Die Auslandschinesen haben einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Kapitalbildung in der VR China und deren Integration in die Weltwirtschaft geleistet. Ihre wichtige Rolle wird besonders deutlich, wenn in Betracht gezogen wird, daß die wachsende ökonomische Verflechtung der VR China mit ihren...

Economic historians of the eighteenth-century British mainland North American colonies have given considerable weight to the role of exports as a stimulus for economic growth. Yet their analyses have been handicapped by reliance on one or two time series to serve as indicators of broader changes...