This paper quantifies the positive and normative impact of Bretton Woods capital controls on global and regional economic activity. A three-region DSGE capital flows accounting framework consisting of the U.S., Western Europe, and the Rest of the World (ROW) is developed to quantify capital...

Since 1950, the economies of East Asia grew rapidly but received little inter-national capital, while Latin America received considerable international capitaleven as their economies stagnated. The literature typically explains the failureof capital to flow to high growth regions as resulting...

This essay reviews Barry Eichengreen's recent book that compares the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Eichengreen focuses on deficient aggregate demand as the key reason for why both downturns were so deep and why they lasted so long. I assess the book's arguments regarding the causes...

Herbert Hoover. I develop a theory of labor market failure for the Depression based on Hoover's industrial labor program that provided industry with protection from unions in return for keeping nominal wages fixed. I find that the theory accounts for much of the depth of the Depression and for...

In this essay we review the empirical literature about sovereign debt and default. As we survey the work of economists, historians, and political scientists, we also emphasize parallel developments by theorists and recommend steps to improve the correspondence between theory and data

We develop a macroeconomic model with physical and human capital, human capital risk, and limited contract enforcement. We show analytically that young (high-return) households are the most exposed to human capital risk and are also the least insured. We document this risk-insurance pattern in...

Why is it difficult to restructure sovereign debt in a timely manner? In this paper we present a theory of the sovereign debt restructuring process in which delay arises as individual creditors hold-up a set- tlement in order to extract greater payments from the sovereign. We then use the theory...

Sovereign governments owe debt to many foreign creditors and can choose which creditors to favor when making payments. This paper documents the de facto seniority structure of sovereign debt using new data on defaults (missed payments or arrears) and creditor losses in debt restructuring...

The recent debt crises in Europe and the U.S. states feature similar sharp increases in spreads on government debt but also show important differences. In Europe, the crisis occurred at high government indebtedness levels and had spillovers to the private sector. In the United States, state...

Commercial real estate accounts for roughly 20% of the U.S. fixed asset stock, and commercial land use is highly regulated. However, little is known about the quantitative impact of these regulations on economic activity or consumer welfare. This paper develops a spatial general equilibrium...