This paper proposes to reexamine the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Taken together in a coherent manner, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification biases, allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment effects, and add...

Despite plausible theoretical grounds for presuming a positive relationship between foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) and economic growth, existing empirical evidence on this nexus is inconclusive. In an effort to add to the empirical literature, this paper estimates the relationship between FDI and the rate of growth of GDP using a stochastic frontier model and employing panel data cover...

We complement existing inferential theory for panel factor models by deriving the asymptotics for the …rst di¤erences of the estimated factors and common components obtained from a non-stationary panel factor model. As an application, we propose an estimator for the long run variance of the common components. JEL Classi…cation: C13, C23. Keywords: Non-stationary panels, common factors, common c...

Most econometric methods for testing the proposition of long-run monetary neutrality rely on the assumption that money and real output do not cointegrate. This paper argues that these results can be attributed in part to the low power of univariate tests, and that a violation of the noncointegration assumption is likely to result in a nonrejection of the neutrality proposition. To alleviate thi...

This paper investigates the impact of climate change on the productivity of crop production using U.S. county-level yield and weather data between 1950 and 2015. It finds that the pooled estimators used in previous studies underestimate the sensitivity of crops to high temperatures by ignoring slope heterogeneity, and underestimate the damage of future climate change on yield. Furthermore, expl...

A modelling framework is developed for describing income-age trajectories that is useful for summarizing not only the average profile for a group of individuals with similar characteristics, but also how individual trajectories differ from the group average. Using data from waves 1-17 of the British Household Panel Survey, the model is estimated separately for twelve groups of individuals diffe...

In this article we analyze the determinants of the functional distribution of government expenditure using for this purpose the models of the median voter's demand common in public choice literature. First of all, we review the economic literature on the factors affecting each component of government expenditure. Then, secondly, we develop a demand model of expenditure structure and we estimate...

Picture a small open economy in the North Atlantic Ocean, highly dependent on trade with the EU and NAFTA. How important are these trading blocs to the country’s exports? How important is the country’s location and size, and how do these affect the export sectors? A unique version of the gravity model is applied here using an inverse hyperbolic sine function. Typically, the export volume is sig...

This study attempts to measure the inefficiency associated with aggregate investment in a transitional economy. The inefficiency is decomposed into allocative and production inefficiency based on standard production theory. Allocative inefficiency is measured by disequilibrium investment demand. Institutional factors are then taken into consideration as possible explanatory variables of the dis...

Using company account data for the US and four European countries this paper analyses the impact of ICT spillovers on companies’ performance. We use different definitions of spillovers to account for inter and intra-industry spillover effects, as well as assessing the presence of spillovers from the US to Europe. We also look at the possibility that spillovers might take some time to materialis...