This paper provides an empirical analysis of individual earnings using data from the Encuesta Suplementaria de Ingresos. We find that the predictable component of income is hump-shaped over the life-cycle, and that there are strong education effects. The unpredictable component of income can be...

This paper shows that, unlike what has been found in other papers, a hydro reservoir is an effective tool to exercise market power. Its appealing as a tool is enhanced by the fact that there is no need to constrain total hydro production - a practice too easy to detect -; it suffices to distort...

State governments finance their expenditures with multiple tax instruments, so when collections from one source decline, they are typically compensated by greater revenues from other sources. This paper addresses the important question of the extent to which personal and corporate income taxes...

Evidence suggests that developing countries are more concerned with stabilizing the nominal exchange rate than developed countries. Some papers show not only that nominal exchange rates are less volatile, but also that international reserves and domestic interest rates are significantly more...

Self regulation is a mechanism of quality vigilance that is frequently used in credence good industries. The providers in these markets generally form a Self Regulated Organization (SRO), composed by some members of the industry, whose main job is to convince consumers through an active...

We study unofficial dollarization, i.e., the use of foreign money alongside the domestic currency, in an environment where spatial separation and limited communication create a role for currency and banks arise endogenously to provide insurance against liquidity preference shocks. Unofficial...

The aim of the present paper is to apply a Markov Switching model to check the characteristics of the Brazilian demand for imports equation based on annual data from 1947 to 2002 and on quarterly data from 1978:I to 2002:II. The results show that this model satisfactorily describes the...

This paper analyses the impact of exchange rate regimes on real exchange rates, as defined by the relative price of nontradables to tradables in Argentina, Brazil, Chile (ABC) and Mexico from 1990 to 2002. As identified by the empirical literature, the real exchange rate is determined in the...

This paper uses the approach of Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003) to propose seasonal unit root tests for dynamic heterogeneous panels based on the means of the individuals HEGY test statistics. The standardised t-bar and F-bar statistics are simply averages of the HEGY tests across groups. These...

We show that even under incomplete markets, the equilibrium manifold identifies individual demands everywhere in their domains. For this, we assume conditions of smoothness, interiority and regularity, but avoid implausible observational requirements. It is crucial that there be date-zero...