The Deep Historical Roots of Macroeconomic Volatility.

• Autores: Sam Hak Kan Tang, Charles Ka Yui Leung
• Localización: Economic record, ISSN 0013-0249, Vol. 92, Nº. 299, 2016, págs. 568-589
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • We present cross-country evidence that a country's macroeconomic volatility, measured either by the standard deviation of output growth or the occurrence of trend-growth breaks, is significantly affected by the country's historical variables. In particular, countries with longer histories of state-level political institutions experience less macroeconomic volatility in post-war periods. Robustness checks reveal that the effect of this historical variable on volatility remains significant and substantial after controlling for a host of structural variables investigated in previous studies. We also find that the state history variable is more important in countries with a higher level of macroeconomic volatility.