We study why capital accumulation in Argentina was slow in the 1990s and 2000s, despite high productivity growth and low international interest rates. We show that limited commitment constraints introduce two mechanisms. First, the response of investment to a total factor productivity increase...

Over the U.S. business cycle, fluctuations in residential investment systematically lead fluctuations in real GDP. Evidently, these dynamics are specific to the U.S. and Canada. In other developed economies residential investment tends to be coincident with the cycle. On the other hand, in all...

We document that at business cycle frequency, nominal variables, such as aggregate price levels and nominal interest rates, are more correlated across countries than real output. Since national central banks control the domestic money supply and their objective has been to keep the nominal...

We investigate a two-country model of real business cycles along the lines of Backus, Kehoe, and Kydland (1992) with one new feature: country one residents are ambiguous [along the lines of Epstein (2001)] about the productivity shocks of country two and vice versa. The model is calibrated and...

Argentina's GDP increased 30% between 2002 and 2005, prompting optimistic assessments that the country had finally left behind its secular stagnation. However, this strong performance followed a sharp decline in economic activity and therefore could be the manifestation of a bounce-back effect...