This paper discusses recent research at the Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research on the prediction of the expansion and recession phases of the business cycle for the UK, US, Germany, France and Italy. Financial variables are important predictors in these models, with the stock market...

This paper proposes that Colonialism is a major explanation behind today’s differences in Income Inequality among countries. We argue that colonies that received an important number of European settlers were characterized by a concentration of economic and political power in the hands of these...

Economic development and bureaucratic corruption are determined jointly in a dynamic general equilibrium model of growth, bribery and tax evasion. Corruption arises from the incentives of public and private agents to conspire in the concealment of information from the government. These...

The performance of alternative fiscal rules is examined in an endogenous growth model with public capital and debt. In addition to investing in infrastructure, the government spends on maintenance and health. Infrastructure affects the production of both commodities and health services. The...

This paper empirically analyses real per capita GDP growth for six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Venezuela) in terms of real exchange rate depreciations, inflation and US interest rates, focussing on the role of the real exchange rate. We find evidence of...

This study examines the properties of monthly CPI inflation in G7 countries and the Euro area (aggregate) over the period 1973-2007 using a new iterative decomposition procedure that separates changes in mean, seasonal and dynamic components together with conditional volatility. We uncover mean...

Growth dynamics and health outcomes are studied in a three period overlapping generations model with public capital. Reproductive agents face a non-zero probability of death in both childhood and adulthood. In addition to working, adults allocate time to their own health and child rearing....

The bulk of literature on real rigidity attempts to identify sources of real rigidity in market imperfections while assuming that the money supply is exogenously set. This paper shows that monetary policy preferences affect the responsiveness of marginal cost to output and through this channel...