This paper proposes Bayesian estimates for welfare effects of consumption fluctuations and growth. Annual data from 82 developed and developing countries indicate a large degree of uncertainty as regards point estimates. Moreover, the comparison between the welfare gain from consumption...

We analyse the costs of a monetary union in West Africa by means of asymmetric aggegate demand and aggregate supply shocks. Previous studies have estimated the shocks with the VAR model. We discuss the limits of this approach and apply a new technique based on the dynamic factor model. The...

This paper analyses the macroeconomic effect of legislated personal income tax changes in South Africa over the 1996-2019 period. We identify personal income tax shocks using a narrative approach and incorporate these shocks in a proxySVAR model. Our analysis shows that permanent changes in...

This paper proposes Bayesian estimates for welfare effects of consumption fluctuations and growth. Annual data from 82 developed and developing countries indicate a large degree of uncertainty as regards point estimates. Moreover, the comparison between the welfare gain from consumption...

This paper employs a production frontier approach that allows distinguishing technological progress from efficiency development. Data on 35 African countries in 1970-2007 show that efficiency losses have constrained growth in Africa while technology progress has played a marginal growth...

This paper develops a Spatial Vector Auto-Regressive (SpVAR) model that takes into account both the time and the spatial dimensions of economic shocks. We apply this framework to analyze the propagation through space and time of macroeconomic (inflation, output gap and interest rate) shocks in...