This paper studies how targeted cash transfers to women affect their empowerment. We use a novel identification strategy to measure women's willingness to pay to receive cash transfers instead of their partner receiving it. We apply this among women living in poor households in urban Macedonia....

This paper provides an overview of the major economic events in Argentina from the adoption of the convertibility plan in 1991 to the collapse of the exchange rate regime in 2001. We focus on the relationship between the credibility of the currency board and capital flows, and the inescapable...

This paper shows that the Russian 1998 crisis had a big impact on capital flows to Emerging Market Economies, EMs, especially in Latin America, and that the impact of the Russian shock differs quite markedly across EMs. To illustrate this statement, we compare the polar cases of Chile and...

This paper evaluates the Swedish Riksbank's Inflation Reports' and draws comparisons among the Reports issued by the Riksbank, the Bank of England, and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. This report poses and addresses a common set of questions about each of the three central banks' Inflation...

How might COVID-19 affect human capital and wellbeing in the long run? The COVID-19 pandemic has already imposed a heavy human cost--taken together, this public health crisis and its attendant economic downturn appear poised to dwarf the scope, scale, and disruptiveness of most modern pandemics....

Using data covering over 100 birth-cohorts in 32 countries, we examine the short- and long-term effects of economic conditions on mortality. We find that small, but not large, booms increase contemporary mortality. Yet booms from birth to age 25, particularly those during adolescence, lower...

Moderating spillovers from the advanced economies during the Great Moderation, the global information technology revolution, the influx of skilled immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the gradual buildup of robust and well-regulated financial institutions over decades after the...

Research linking economic conditions and health largely ignores children's mental health problems, which are the most common and consequential health issues for children and adolescents. We examine the effects of unemployment rates and housing prices on child and adolescent mental health and use...

We develop an informational theory of dictatorship. Dictators survive not because of their use of force or ideology but because they convince the public--rightly or wrongly--that they are competent. Citizens do not observe the dictator's type but infer it from signals inherent in their living...

We implement a new survey of firms' macroeconomic beliefs in New Zealand and document a number of novel stylized facts from this survey. Despite nearly twenty-five years under an inflation targeting regime, there is widespread dispersion in firms' beliefs about both past and future macroeconomic...