What drives US current account imbalances? Is there solid evidence that the behavior of the current account is different during deficits and surpluses or that the size of the imbalance matters? Is there a threshold relationship between the US current account and its main drivers? We estimate a...

The literature has argued that developing countries are unable to adopt counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policies due to financial imperfections and unfavorable politicaleconomy conditions. Using a world sample of 115 industrial and developing countries for 1984-2008, we find that the level...

Convergence tests implicitly test the unit root hypothesis for per capita income. Although the statistics do not have critical values under the null hypothesis most papers on this subject use them, with the corresponding problems for inference. This paper

The literature has argued that developing countries are unable to adopt countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies due to financial imperfections and unfavorable political-economy conditions. Using a world sample of 115 industrial and developing countries for 1984-2008, we find that the level...

What drives US current account imbalances? Is there solid evidence that the behavior of the current account is different during deficits and surpluses or that the size of the imbalance matters? Is there a threshold relationship between the US current account and its main drivers? We estimate a...

We can understand the role of the liberalization of capital outflows on the global imbalances, the increasing share of US equities in foreign investors' portfolio and the decline in the world interest rate and the S&P dividend-price ratio, facts observed during the last three decades, when taxes...

In contrast to industrialized countries, emerging market economies are characterized by pro- or acyclical monetary policies and high output volatility. This paper argues that those facts can be related to a long-run feature of the economy – namely, its institutional quality (IQL). The paper...

The literature has argued that developing countries are unable to adopt counter-cyclical monetary and fiscal policies due to financial imperfections and unfavorable political-economy conditions. Using a world sample of 115 industrial and developing countries for 1984-2008 we find that the level...

Recent research has found evidence that supports the purchasing power parity (PPP) condition in developed countries using very long-span data, while evidence for developing countries is almost nonexistent. This paper tries to fulfill this void by testing the validity of PPP as a long run...