The Robustness of the Link between Volatility and Growth of Output

Recent research, using cross-sectional data, has found a negative relationship between volatility and growth of output. We examine the robustness of these findings to the choice of countries and time periods. The results indicate that the results are very sensitive to the choice of data. Therefore a cross-sectional time series technique is used to allow volatilities to adjust across time. This alternative methodology gives a robust negative relationship between the volatility and growth of output when the full sample of countries is used. However, the negative relationship is somewhat less robust when a sample of OECD countries is used. JEL no. F43, O40