Costly monitoring may lead to credit rationing in equilibrium in an economy without any adverse selection or moral hazard problems. Given the widespread phenomenon of government intervention in credit markets in developing and developed countries, the natural question then is, How effective are...

We develop a simple human capital model for optimum schooling length when earnings are stochastic, and highlight the pivotal role of risk attitudes and the schooling gradient of earnings risk. We use Spanish data to document the gradient and to estimate individual response to earnings risk in...

This paper studies the detrimental effect of sudden stops on the growth of Thai firms’ fixed assets. We focus on the fixed assets adjustment that firms undertake at times of financial constraints. We derive our results from balance sheet data for 284 nonfinancial Thai listed firms. Our data...

This paper studies the relationship between a set of commodity prices in a small open economy like Uruguay and the corresponding international and regional prices. The empirical methodology used is the multivariate cointegration procedure based on maximum likelihood methods introduced by...

The paper estimates the Portuguese Shadow Economy (SE) from 1977 to 2004 and tests the statistical relationships between the SE and other economic variables. In order to carry out the econometric analysis, a multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model with means and intercepts is applied....

This paper proposes a new taxonomy for countries based on principal component analysis. The paper investigates 51 countries using a set of 13 indicators of economic and technological performance for the period 2000-2002. The methodology reduces the variables and groups the countries that show...

The ability of monetary policy to affect long-term interest rates is of central importance for economics and finance. Several recent studies have shown that long-term interest rates are virtually unaffected by monetary policy. This paper develops a statistical methodology to identify the...

Several papers have shown that high-inflation contributes to mean reversion in real exchange rates. This paper studies the Chilean peso (CLP) and Mexican peso (MXN) real exchange rates over 1980-2003. Three datasets are used: two with quarterly and monthly bilateral data (against the U.S....

Whether or not foreign direct investment helps to upgrade the technological capacities of firms in host countries is an important question for policy makers. Even more important is the question of what are the most effective channels of technology transfer. The econometric analysis presented...

We investigate the impact on profit margins of exchange rate fluctuations in order to examine optimal pricing policy by source countries in the UK car market. We first estimate a nested logit demand model of new cars to calculate model-specific profit margins. Next we use these estimates to...