This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper forecasts inflation in Sudan following two methodo...

Can part of Africa’s current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question empirically, I combined data from ship records with data from various historical documents reporting slave ethnicities, and construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa’s slave trades between 1400 and 1900. I find a strong robust negative correlation b...

The mechanisms of growth out of backwardness are investigated in an intertemporal general equilibrium model for Thailand. Learning by exporting is assumed to be the main vehicle of international spillover. While the econometric literature discusses the causality between exports and productivity, we analyze the endogenous dynamic interaction and with long run growth effects of economic policy. T...

This paper finds a strong positive correlation between female labor force participation and negative health outcomes for middle-aged men and women, and suggests that this correlation is mediated by household-level stress. At the crosscountry aggregate level, I show that labor force participation of women is associated with increased mortality rates among both men and women. At the individual le...

This paper investigates the predictive ability of financial variables for euro area growth through bivariate and multivariate non-parametric Granger causality tests. Apart from assessing the within-country forecasting ability of commonly-employed financial variables, such as the term spread, the stock market returns and the growth of real money supply, we also test for cross-country influences....

Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific interest typically exert some influence on their treatment status under the policy to be evaluated and on th...

This paper attempts to explore the causality relationship between outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) and home country economic growth using Malaysia as a case. The main findings do not advocate the OFDI-led growth hypothesis. In order to promote OFDI-led growth, the home government should prepare the private sector for increasing competition in the era of globalization so that linkages ca...

Using data from a repeated public good game, I conduct a Granger causality test and find that contributions and beliefs about the contributions of others decline together, with neither variable leading the other. As a result, I model contributions and beliefs using a system of simultaneous equations. Estimating the system provides evidence on the magnitude of the projection bias. Since contribu...

This paper describes the implied volatility function computed from options on the Italian stock market index between 1995 and 1998 and tries to find out potential explanatory variables. We find that the typical smirk observed for S&P500 stock index characterizes also Mib30 stock index. When potential determinants are investigated by a linear Granger Causality test, the important role played by ...

Policy Evaluation and Economic Policy Advice Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific interest typically exert some influence on their treatment stat...