Immigration has been a significant part of US population growth over recent decades, with the number of ``foreign born to non-US nationals" rising from approximately 10 million in 1970 to nearly 40 million or 12.9% of the US total population in 2010. In this paper, using a VAR with sign...

According to recent UN projections more than 50 percent of the growth in world population over the next half century will be due to population growth in Africa. Given this, any policy that influences African demography will have a significant impact on the world distribution of income. In this...

This paper shows that historical variables can explain a significant part of discretionary government spending across countries. We argue that these results provide evidence in favor of Besley and Persson’s (2009) hypothesis that institutional quality or state capacity is historically...

Over the last two decades immigration policies in OECD economies have become increasingly selective and the rate of skilled migration from low income economies has risen markedly. This paper analyzes the theoretical implications of this shift in migration patterns for the growth and distribution...

This paper argues that Blomberg and Hess's ({\it Journal of International Economics 1997}) finding that political variables can be used to predict exchange rate movements better than the random walk model must be seen in the context of the decade and half of previous research which failed to...

We propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policy using vector autoregressions. Specifically, we use sign restrictions to identify a government revenue shock as well as a government spending shock, while controlling for a generic business cycle shock and a monetary...

This paper investigates the determinants of UK interest rates using a factor-augmented vector autoregression model (VAR), similar to the one suggested by Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 120 (2005), No. 1, pp. 387-422). The method allows impulse response...

This paper examines the dynamic implications of international trade in a two-sector overlapping-generations economy with endogenous growth. It analyzes the global dynamics of this model for both a closed economy and a two-country world economy. It shows how international trade can cause the...