It has long been an article of faith amongst regional economists that increasing returns to scale are necessary to explain the punctiform location of economic activity and population. However, there is no consensus in the empirical literature over whether returns to scale are constant or...

This paper sets out a formal model to account for the net effect of an exchange rate devaluation on both income elasticities of demand for export and imports and, consequently, on the long-term balance-of-payments constrained growth rate. Such model shows how the exchange rate impacts on the...

This paper addresses the question of whether or not a theory of total factor productivity (TFP) is needed in order to explain the observed large per capita income differences across countries. As the argument that it is needed has been reached by calculating TFP empirically, we show that the way...

One explanation for the U.S. subprime crisis was the export-led growth strategy of China that allowed the country to build up substantial trade surpluses. This led to a world glut of savings and was responsible for low world interest rates and the cheap credit in, especially, the United States....

The subprime crisis was largely unanticipated as the efficient market hypothesis held sway and the Gaussian techniques used to rate collateralized debt obligations were assumed to have diversified risk and reduced systemic risk. However, as this paper argues, many of the shortcomings stemming...

This paper uses the balance-of-payments-constrained model to estimate the determinants of the long-run rate of growth of Brazil. Contrary to previous tests for the country found in the literature, this paper uses a different approach to test the long-run relationship between actual growth rates...

This is an addendum to Britto and McCombie (2009), in which more appropriate procedures are used to test for the long-run relationship between actual growth rates for Brazil and the hypothetical balance-of-payments growth rates. The results confirm the original conclusions.

This paper tests the balance-of-payments constrained growth model using Thailand as a case study. The study explicitly considers the potential existence of a structural break when estimating the model. On balance, it is found that Thailand's long-run economic growth over the period 1962-2009 is...