Empirical evidence shows that sovereign defaults are associated with significant downturns in economic activity in defaulting countries. However, the existing literature on sovereign debt and default mainly analyzes endowment economies and, therefore, does not address the relationship between...

In this paper, I propose a general equilibrium model featuring heterogeneous firms and a government that is both unable to commit and relatively more impatient than firms. I find that, as predicted by theoretical papers on limited commitment, the threat of expropriation alone is enough to...

A large theoretical literature suggests that financial frictions provide a mechanism which amplifies and propagates macroeconomic shocks. However, quantitative papers that embed this mechanism, referred to as the credit multiplier, into standard DSGE models conclude that although credit...

This paper provides a description of some of the empirical regularities for the Mexican business cycle. The purpose is to have a benchmark for assessing dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models for the Mexican case. We follow the Kydland and Prescott methodology to describe the cyclical...

The volatility accuracy of several volatility forecast models is examined for the case of daily spot returns for the Mexican peso - US Dollar exchange rate. The models applied are univariate GARCH, a multi-variate GARCH (the BEKK model), option implied volatilities, and a composite forecast...

Emerging economies tend to experience larger political uncertainty and more default episodes than developed countries. This paper studies the effect of political uncertainty on sovereign default and interest rate spreads in emerging markets. The paper develops a quantitative model of sovereign...

We analyze the existence and magnitude of downward nominal wage rigidities in the Mexican labor market. We use data from the administration records of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS). These records form a firm level panel data, which allows to follow workers employed in the same...

Inflation forecasts of the Federal Reserve seem to have systematically under-predicted inflation from the fourth quarter of 1968 until Volcker's appointment as Chairman, and to systematically over-predict it afterwards until the second quarter of 1998. Furthermore, under quadratic loss,...

We analyze the issue of the impact of multiple breaks on monetary neutrality results, using a long annual international data set. We empirically verify whether neutrality propositions remain addressable (and if so, whether they hold or not), when unit root tests are carried out allowing for...

This paper proposes a method for estimating the factor shares of labor and capital using cross sectional household survey data containing detailed information on household income by source. It then applies the method to the case of Mexico, a country where factor shares are almost the opposite of...