Purpose – This study aims to identify structural breaks in the current account and the periods between these breaks, which the authors name stability spells, and study their characteristics and determinants. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from the IMF and the World Bank, this study applies the Lee and Strazicich test to endogenously identify breaks and the Heckman…
Convergence among nations that share the same preferences and technologies is a key result of the closed-economy neoclassical growth framework that has received substantial support in the data. However, Heckscher–Ohlin versions of the two-sector neoclassical growth model predict that nations that differ in their capital–labor ratios may not converge to the same steady state, even…
We advance a novel mechanism that helps to explain the puzzling evidence on the natural resource curse. The new channel arises in a standard dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin model composed of small-open economies that take international output prices as given. Within this framework, a more capital-intensive primary sector implies that natural-resource abundant economies grow more slowly along…
We explore the dynamics of the Scottish National Party (SNP) support using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) during 1999-06. We study the relative importance of political sentiments and egocentric economic evaluations by disentangling the effects of state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity by gender. Egocentric economic evaluations constitute an important determinant of SNP support over the entire period, being this…
Balancing access to antibiotics with the control of antibiotic resistance is a global public health priority. At present, antibiotic stewardship is informed by a ‘use it and lose it’ principle, in which antibiotic use by the population is linearly related to resistance rates. However, theoretical and mathematical models suggest that use–resistance relationships are nonlinear. One…
We apply a non-parametric procedure, Multiple Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), to endogenously select the best multiple threshold model for the European Central Bank (ECB) Taylor Rule (TR). MARS offers the advantage of not excluding simpler models if they better fit the data. On monthly data from 1/2000 to 9/2016, the TR exhibits thresholds for both…
