We analyze the sustainability of the US current account (CA) deficit by means of unit-root tests. First, we argue that there are several reasons to believe that the CA may follow a non-linear mean-reversion behavior under the null of stationarity. Using a non-linear ESTAR model we can reject the...

We evaluate the empirical relevance of real convergence on the process of nominal convergence for the new EU Member States. We focus our discussion on two main channels: productivity growth and increased trade openness. Productivity growth can have a positive effect on price levels via the...

The recent literature on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) has emphasized the role of two phenomena that may lead to the rejection of the PPP hypothesis: structural breaks and non-linear adjustment induced by transaction costs. These two hypotheses are analyzed separately in the literature. We...

In the wake of the global financial crisis, several macroeconomic contributions have highlighted the risks of excessive credit expansion. In particular, too much finance can have a negative impact on growth. We examine the microeconomic foundations of this argument, positing a non-monotonic...

Using both macro- and industry-level data this paper analyses the non-linear effects of financial development and international financial integration on economic growth in Europe. Special attention is devoted to modeling threshold effects with respect to the depth of financial markets as a...