This paper introduces a moving average reliability growth model to describe the evolution of component-based software. In this model, the reliability of a system is a function of the reliabilities of its constituent components. The moving average provides a trend indicator to depict reliability growth movement within the evolution of a series of component enhancements. The moving average can re...

Was America’s “new era” of faster productivity and profits growth a figment of fevered imaginations or a genuine advance? Our detailed examination gives grounds for cautious optimism about the longer term. Trend productivity growth could stay above 2% a year, as long as labour and product markets remain vigorously competitive. If so, trend company earnings could grow close to 3% a year in const...

Emerging market business cycles exhibit strongly countercyclical current accounts, consumption volatility that exceeds income volatility, and “sudden stops” in capital inflows. These features contrast with developed small open economies. Nevertheless, we show that a standard model characterizes both types of markets. Motivated by the frequent policy regime switches observed in emerging markets,...

We investigate the performance of a battery of standard unit root tests when the true data generating process has a Markov-switching trend growth rate and variance. Regime switching under both the null hypothesis of a unit root and the alternative hypothesis of trend stationarity is considered. In contrast to the case of a single break in trend growth rate, multiple Markov-switching breaks unde...

We compare a number of widely used trend-cycle decompositions of output in a formal Bayesian model comparison exercise. This is motivated by the often markedly different results from these decompositions—different decompositions have broad implications for the relative importance of real versus nominal shocks in explaining variations in output. Using US quarterly real GDP, we find that the over...

In recent years Tanzania has seen a rapid growth of its gold mining sector, the trend which has made the country the third largest gold producer in Africa. This growth is attributed much to the favorable investment climate created by the government for Multinational mining companies through the provision of various tax incentives and the ongoing discovery of new mining locations. Although tax i...

BACKGROUND United States health care spending rose rapidly in the 2000s, after a period of temporary slowdown in the 1990s. However, the description of the overall trend and the understanding of the underlying drivers of this trend are very limited. This study investigates how well historical hospital cost/revenue drivers explain the recent hospital spending trend in the 2000s, and how importan...