This paper shows that a puzzling yet strong correlation exists between imports and exports. Cross-section and time-series analysis for the broadest possible country sample (159 countries over 1960-2006) attests to the robustness of this finding, even though causality is not explored in depth....

Until the eruption of the 2007-2008 international crisis, the decade was characterized by a high growth of credit –especially credit lines for consumption– and of GDP in a large part of the developed and developing worlds. By the end of the period, the process coincided with increasing...

Working on a sample of OECD countries spanning the period 1970-2003, this paper contributes to the literature on the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle by making three main innovations: First, it goes beyond the traditional national-level investment-saving equations to estimate, for the first time,...

The Central Banks use diffusion indexes (DIs) to synthesize information from proprietary surveys that complement official statistics generating real time proxies of the economically relevant variables. According to the evidence, the DIs closely follow the economic cycle reflected in those...

The Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) implements a monthly Survey of Business Economic Perspectives to capture the business climate and economic perspectives. The survey, includes both qualitative and quantitative questions on past and expected change in different economic variables of the main...

The Central Banks use diffusion indexes (DIs) to synthesize information from proprietary surveys that complement official statistics generating real-time proxies of the economically relevant variables. According to the evidence, the DIs closely follow the economic cycle reflected in those...

The Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) implements a monthly Survey of Business Economic Perspectives to capture the business climate and economic perspectives. The survey, includes both qualitative and quantitative questions on past and expected change in different economic variables of the main...

The Central Banks use diffusion indexes (DIs) to synthesize information from proprietary surveys that complement official statistics generating real time proxies of the economically relevant variables. According to the evidence, the DIs closely follow the economic cycle reflected in those...

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the banking system, over and beyond its credit function, has a significant impact on per capita GDP by providing means of payment. An annual database of 85 countries spanning the 1980-2008 period is exploited to this end. On the descriptive front,...