This study tests the Balassa-Samuelson (BS) hypothesis, which explains the real exchange rate with relative productivity differences, for ten OECD countries between 1975 and 2007 by using the Johansen cointegration approach. The study further tests the effect of the terms of trade variable by...

In this paper we test for the existence of equity market contagion originating from the United States to OECD markets over the period from 01/01/1990 to 01/11/2010 characterized by several episodes of financial crises. Our empirical analysis relies on the use of an ICAPM model which has three...

Corruption in developing states reduces the effectiveness of foreign aid that is allocated to them, because government officials in corrupt countries use this money for private rather than public purposes. Despite this, existing studies do not find different aid policies from donor governments...

This paper explores the bi-directional long-run relationship between energy consumption in the road transport sector with CO2 emissions and economic growth in OECD countries. Using time series data from 1960 to 2008 and employing the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares cointegration approach,...

Relevant economic literature frequently focuses on the impact of credit shocks on housing prices. The macroeconomic doctrine of the new consensus macroeconomics completely ignores bank credit. However, the Great Recession has highlighted the importance of bank credit. The purpose of this article...

This paper studies the impact of fiscal decentralization on public sector efficiency (PSE). We first use a theoretical framework that illustrates the two opposing forces that shape a non-monotonic effect of fiscal decentralization on PSE. Subsequently, we carry out an empirical analysis for 21...

Relevant economic literature frequently focuses on the impact of credit shocks on housing prices. The macroeconomic doctrine of the new consensus macroeconomics completely ignores bank credit. However, the Great Recession has highlighted the importance of bank credit. The purpose of this article...

Innovation has long been recognized as one of the key elements of economic progress, though some say that its direct relation to the concept of economic growth remains rather controversial. Productivity growth is the key economic indicator of innovation, non-the-less. Growth theory assumes that...

This paper uses an instrumental variable approach to study whether public debt has a causal effect on economic growth in a sample of OECD countries. The results are consistent with the existing literature that has found a negative correlation between debt and growth. However, the link between...

We assess the contribution of macroeconomic uncertainty -- approximated by the dispersion of the real GDP survey forecasts -- to the ex post and ex ante prediction of stock price bubbles. For a panel of six OECD economies covering 24 years, two alternative binary chronologies of bubble periods...