Andrea Boltho

University of Oxford | OX · Department of Economics

Economic integration is generally thought to favour convergence in the economic performance of previously separated regions; but this is far from universally true, as the experience of the members of the Eurozone testifies. The paper considers the two sharply contrasting cases of East and West German convergence following reunification and the endu...

The early literature critical of the European Monetary Union feared the effects of asymmetric shocks on an area with little intercountry labor mobility and no common fiscal policy. Yet, asymmetric behavior, rather than asymmetric shocks, appears to be at the root of present difficulties. Peripheral countries have seen profligate public sectors incu...

Over the last six decades, economic developments in the three countries that were defeated in World War II look strikingly similar. First came rapid reconstruction. Then followed the economic miracles of the Golden Age. The years that went from the first oil shock to the mid-1990s still saw fairly robust, and relatively similar, economic developmen...

Mezzo secolo fa l'Italia meridionale e la Spagna del Sud-Ovest erano regioni povere e in larga misura agricole. Il prodotto pro capite non superava di molto il 50 per cento dei livelli raggiunti dalle aree settentrionali dei due paesi. Oggi, lo scarto è stato ridotto al 30 per cento circa in Spagna ma è rimasto sostanzialmente invariato in Italia n...

China is located in East Asia and, just as Japan, Taiwan or (South) Korea at earlier stages of their development, has now grown very rapidly for some three decades. That is not enough, however, for it to qualify for membership of the club. The East Asian development model has a number of additional and important characteristics. Four are selected f...

Economic integration, from the European Payments Union and the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market, the European Monetary System, the Single Market, and the euro, is one of the most visible, controversial and commented-upon aspects of Europe’s development since the end of World War II. It is hard to imagine that Europe’s economy...

Over the last quarter century, public finances have been under pressure in most OECD countries as deficits and debts rose under the pressure of relatively slow growth and high interest rates. This, in turn, has affected the welfare state, since efforts at containing deficits have often been concentrated on public expenditure. Much of the literature...

Between 1978 and 2000, Chinese GDP expanded more than seven-fold; present official projections suggest a further four-fold expansion to 2020. Is this feasible and, if so, what would be the conse-quences for the rest of the world? China has a huge catch-up potential and a vast resource of cheap labor. Policies are improving. The fiscal, employment a...

For a decade now Japan has virtually stagnated. Some blame this on a succession of unfavourable shocks that began with the bursting of the "bubble" economy. More appropriate macroeconomic policies, targeting inflation and/or the exchange rate, could, in this view, lead to a revival. Others argue that the country's problems are deeper seated and req...

The past century saw unprecedented rises in life expectancy and living standards. It also witnessed major structural changes, the rise of 'big government' and two globalizations. Yet, the century's economic history was marred by policy and market failures resulting in a massive world-wide depression, frequent financial crises (particularly in the d...

The past century saw unprecedented rises in life expectancy and living standards. It also witnessed major structural changes, the rise of "big government" and two globalizations. Yet, the century's economic history was marred by policy and market failures resulting in a massive world-wide depression, frequent financial crises (particularly in the d...

Despite massive regional policy efforts, GDP per capita in Southern Italy has only briefly converged on Northern Italian levels in the 1960's. Failure of convergence since then is associated with a policy switch from investment toward income maintenance, with reduced wage sensitivity to regional labor market conditions and with increases in rent-se...

In the last 150 years the world economy has experienced two periods of free trade (the 1840s to the 1870s, and the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s), followed by two relapses into moderate protectionism (the years 1880-1913 and those following the oil shocks of the 1970s). Yet, despite widespread fears and continued warnings of rising protectionism, rece...

In three periods of its modern economic history (1913–37, 1952–73, and 1973–90), Japan grew up to twice as rapidly as did other major industrialized countries. The paper investigates whether growth in these years was export-led. The results of five very different tests suggest that domestic forces rather than foreign demand propelled longer-run gro...

For most Western European observers, Bretton Woods is synonymous with the fixed exchange rate regime of the 1950s and 1960s. Little consideration has been given, outside Britain, to the negotiations of 1943–44, which were largely seen as an Anglo-American dispute that was bound to be won by the United States. And relatively little appears to have c...

Barring major disruptions, China will become the world's most dynamic growth pole, and could become one of the world's largest economies, if not the largest, by the year 2020. Industrial countries, especially Japan and the United States, are expected to benefit, while many developing countries may be put under competitive pressure. A simulation ana...

As has often been noted, the United States and the European Community share a number of common economic features. First and foremost are size and living standards. The population of the United States at the beginning of this decade was about 250 million, as against a European Community figure of some 325 million (270 million if Greece, Portugal and...

Standard theory predicts that exchange rate changes have merely temporary real effects. Yet, if the higher profits that a devaluation ensures are used to improve non-price competitiveness, longer-run effects are possible. The paper looks at the experience of Germany, Spain, France and Italy which, in the 1950s and 1960s, either benefited from low p...

The orthodox theory of economic growth has long been unable to explain some real world "stylized.facts" such as the reasons for continued long-run expansion, the absence of convergence in per capita incomes across rich and poor countries and the frequent presence of medium-term changes in growth rates. Recently, new approaches to economic growth, o...

While Japan's postwar macroeconomic performance has been impressive, it is less so in the area of cyclical fluctuations—the improvement relative to the prewar period is modest, and the record vis-à-vis other major economies since the 1950s is poor. Diminished volatility in the 1950s and 1960s was due mainly to a stable world economy. Reasons for a...

Traditionally, economic policy cooperation in Europe has taken the form of setting common rules rather than taking discretionary action. This picture did not change in the 1980s. Despite high unemployment and decelerating inflation the EEC countries refrained from any coordinated expansionary fiscal policy. One reason for this may have been the sur...

Infrastructure development is a priority on policy agendas in the EU and worldwide, because of the very high investment needs in basic infrastructure, especially in lagging behind regions and countries. The paper provides a descriptive analysis of the infrastructural gaps in EU transition economies at national and, as far as possible, regional leve...

How macroeconomic policy activism influences business cycles remains a major unresolved question. This paper compares the degree of cyclical stability in industrialized countries over three periods (1870–1913, 1922–1937 and 1950–1979), two of which were little affected by demand management, while the third saw a large degree of policy involvement....

Probably for the first time for over a century, the developing countries recorded a surplus on their goods and non-factor services account in 1983–1987. This outcome has reflected the retrenchment policies foisted upon them by the debt crisis but also the United States' concomitant large current account deficit. There is a clear danger that, over t...

The projections for economic growth in the industrial countries during 1985-95 have been revised steadily downward - to a pessimistic 2.5 percent a year. The crucial element in achieving high growth rates is a rising rate of investment, itself a reflection of confidence in the economy. The conditions that stimulate higher investment can result from...

This paper looks at trends in collective consumption in fifteen developed OECD countries over the years 1950–6.* The introduction defines the concept of collective consumption which is adopted. The first section looks at trends through time and at the intercountry variability of the shares of collective consumption in GDP. The second section presen...

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At the turn of the century more parties of the Left were in government in advanced capitalist countries than ever before, including, for the first time ever, those of the four largest West European countries. Does this make a substantial difference to the conduct of economic policy? Even 20 years ago the answer would have been clear. Mitterrand had...