This paper investigates the attitudes of political parties to international trade in 23 OECD countries in the period 1972–2004. Employing different datasets and various measures of trade openness, we examine how government ideology affects trade policy preferences and whether this relationship...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the links between public debt and economic growth in advanced economies. We find that theoretical models yield ambiguous results. Whether high levels of public debt have a negative effect on long-run growth is thus an empirical question. While many...

This paper examines whether or not immigration has a positive influence on the duration of unemployment, in a macroeconomic perspective. The integration of immigrants into the labor market is a recurrent topic in literature on the economic consequences of immigration, and it is a central concern...

The relevant economic literature frequently focuses on the impact of credit shocks on housing prices. The doctrine of the "New Consensus Macroeconomics" completely ignores bank credit. The "Great Recession," however, has highlighted the significance of bank credit. The purpose of this...

This study applies a flexible Fourier stationary test, proposed by Becker et al. (2006) to investigate the mean reversion of inflation in 22 OECD countries over the period of 1961 to 2011. While traditional unit root tests give us mixed results, empirical results from our flexible Fourier...

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...

This study identifies systematic determinants of some key budgetary aggregates in transition and OECD economies. Because of the lack of theory on public expenditure, the study is empirical. We use three approaches: regression analysis, non-parametric efficiency analysis, and construction of a...

Traditional theories of integration such as the optimum currency area approach attribute a prominent role to international labour mobility in coping with relative economic fluctuations between countries. However, recent studies on international migration have overlooked the role of short-run...