Infrastructure and growth nexus has been debated in the literature since 1980s. This debate has a vital importance for the sake of developing countries. These countries need to grow faster in order to catch-up their advanced counterparts. Thus, it is important to detect the effect of infrastructure on growth. Bearing in mind this fact, we develop a standard growth regression in this present chapter using per capita GDP growth rate as a dependent variable. Infrastructure is added to the model as an index constructed from the indicators of infrastructure: total electric generating capacity, total telephone lines and the length of road network. We also employ set of instrumental variables comprising 29 developing countries between 1990 and 2014. In order to estimate our dynamic panel data we prefer GMM estimators. According to our empirical analysis, we can claim that infrastructure has a positive and significant impact on growth. But this impact is smaller than the earlier studies predict.

The aim of this study is to analyze the validity of Phillips curve in Turkey. As known from the theory, in theoric literature, in terms of Phillips curve based on the relation between inflation and unemployment rate, it is possible to see different approaches. The aim of this study is to handle the 80 relation between inflation and unemployment rate using econometrics and evaluate in terms of Turkey. In the empirical literature, usually short and long relations are estimated to analyze Phillips curve. The empirical part of this study supports the empirical literature. In this study, for unemployment and inflation rate, monthly data for 2003-2016 is used. The data is obtained from World Bank, OECD and TUIK official website. First, the unit root tests with structural breaks are carried out to the series, from the obtained results, both of the series have unit root with structural break, beside this, both for short and long term, there is no cointegration relationship between these variables. So, Phillips curve is not valid for Turkey, not only for short term, but also for long.

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Infrastructure plays a critical role in explaining the growth differentials between regions. The growth performances of Latin America are lagged behind East Asia and this fact is often attributed to the infrastructure gap between these regions. It is advised to Latin America to increase its infrastructure investments in order to record high growth rates. But as infrastructure is multidimensional, in which sector the investments should be channeled? This study tries to determine this with an empirical model. The empirical model in this study is a growth function and the infrastructure variables are added as an input to this function. Empirical results suggest that the long-run elasticity of transportation is higher than the long run elasticities of telecommunications and power. Thus, in order to catch-up East Asia quickly, Latin America should invest in transportation.

Which countries should be in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)? This question has been debated frequently in the aftermath of the Sovereign Debt Crisis. But this has been asked in every stages of European integration. This discussion has rooted in the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) theory. The theory simply reveals that; if the countries have similar business cycles, one size fits all monetary policy would able to address the problems of member countries. Otherwise, no single monetary policy could be able to satisfy all members. In this respect, we test the business cycle convergence in EMU12 countries over time and we have also analyzed the effects of crisis on this convergence. We have found that business cycles converged over time in these countries. This convergence rises in the times of crisis as they slump together after the shock, but falls sharply in the aftermath of the crisis. This reflects the divergent recovery paths of the countries and put a pressure on single monetary policy especially after crisis.