We show that dependence on foreign energy can increase economic instability by raising the likelihood of equilibrium indeterminacy, hence making fluctuations driven by self-fulfilling expectations easier to occur. This is demonstrated in a standard neoclassical growth model. Calibration...

Goodwin's Predator-Prey model is structurally unstable. In its pure form, the model has an equilibrium that is neither stable nor unstable. Ploeg showed that relaxing the hypothesis of fixed proportion technology would stabilize the equilibrium. On the other hand, Goodwin showed that the...

We show that dependence of production on foreign inputs (or non-producible natural resources) can significantly increase the likelihood of indeterminacy. Payment of imported foreign factors of production may act as a semi-fixed cost, amplifying production externalities and returns to scale,...

I present an overlapping generations model, with formal education as the engine of growth, close to Glomm and RaviKumar (1992). Contrary to Glomm and Ravikumar, I Show that public schooling, when compared to a private system, may stimulate economic growth.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on and theoretical support for the close link between oil prices and aggregate macroeconomic performence in the 1970s. Although this link has been well documented in the empirical literature and is further confirmed in this paper, standard economic...

A large body of empirical literature has suggested that oil price shocks have an important effect on economic activity. But in most of the literature the analysis is exclusively done in the time domain. However, interesting relations exist at different frequencies. We use (cross) wavelet...

Economic agents simultaneously operate at different horizons. Many economic processes are the result of the actions of several agents with different term objectives. Therefore, economic time-series is a combination of components operating on different frequencies. Several questions about the...

This study looks into the factors that explain foreign direct investment in Brazil by country of origin of investment. Based on a sample of more than 100 countries that invested and have not yet invested in Brazil, multiple estimation techniques, such as the Tobit, Heckit and Probit, are used to...

In this article, we focus on the consequences of quorum requirements for turnout in referendums. We use a rational choice, decision theoretic voting model to demonstrate that participation quorums change the incentives some electors face, inducing those who oppose changes in the status quo and...

We use simulation methods in an expected utility maximization framework to analyze a farmer`s optimal resource allocation in the presence of government payments, decoupled and not. This framework is extended to incorporate the optimal choice of investment levels in the presence of credit...