Real interest rates in the United States have reached extremely high levels in the last several years. This surge in real rates at all maturities has not lacked explanations. Large current and prospective deficits, tight money, better profit prospects, financial deregulation, and increased...

Both Portugal and Greece have been running large current account deficits, and these are expected to continue in the future. Yet, financial markets do not appear to be worried. Starting from this observation, we document that Portugal and Greece are in fact representative of a broader evolution:...

Unemployment insurance and employment protection are typically discussed and studied in isolation. In this paper, we argue that they are tightly linked, and we focus on their joint optimal design.We start our analysis with a simple benchmark, with risk averse workers, risk neutral firms, and...

Much of the policy discussion of labor market institutions has been at the margin, with proposals to tighten unemployment benefits, reduce employment protection, and so on. There has been little discussion however of what the ultimate goal and architecture should be. The paper focuses on...