This paper identifies the international credit channel of monetary policy by analyzing the universe of corporate loans in Mexico, matched with firm and bank balance-sheet data, and by exploiting foreign monetary policy shocks, given the large presence of European and U.S. banks in Mexico. The...

Previous studies have established a negative relationship between total government spending and entrepreneurship activity. However, the relationship between the composition of government spending and entrepreneurial activity has been woefully under-researched. This paper fills this gap in the...

This paper uses the central tool of an investment-savings and monetary-policy model with an augmented Philips curve and presents a few extensions of that model to analyze the multiplier effects of macroeconomic policies in the United States. In doing so, the authors incorporate realistic...

This paper works at the interface of the literature exploring the raison d'etre of the informal labor market and that explaining the real exchange rate appreciations occurring in many Latin American countries during periods of reform. The authors first build a small country-Australian style...

The debate on fiscal policy in Europe centers on how to let automatic stabilizers work while achieving fiscal consolidation. There is significant agreement on the importance of using fiscal policy as a counter-cyclical instrument, as monetary policy can no longer play this role. In contrast,...

What was the impact of Brazil's 1998-99 currency crisis-which resulted in a change of exchange rate regime and a large real devaluation-on the occupational structure of the labor force and the distribution of incomes? Would it have been possible to predict such effects ahead of the crisis? The...

Pension reform is spreading around the globe, from Latin America to the OECD countries, and major reform projects are being discussed in many other developing, transition, and OECD countries. The authors survey current research issues and country experiences related to old-age social security...

Latvia's experience over the past decade shows that economic growth and real convergence can no longer be assumedto be exogenously driven processes determined by given technological improvements and relatively higher factor returns. Instead, it is an endogenously driven process led by many...

The authors develop a macroeconomic framework that captures links between aid, public investment, growth, and poverty. Public investment is disaggregated into education, infrastructure, and health, and affects both aggregate supply and demand. Dutch disease effects are captured by accounting for...

Evidence from a large panel of low-income and lower middle-income countries over the period 1995-2012 suggests that, contrary to other countries, public investment in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) has been pro-cyclical. Public investment contracts more in"bad times"than it...