The Chilean economy experienced a decade of sustained growth in aggregate output and productivity after the 1982 financial crisis. This paper analyzes the role of allocative efficiency on total factor productivity (TFP) in the manufacturing sector by applying the methodology of Hsieh and Klenow...

This paper studies the effects of asymmetries in re-election probabilities across parties on public policy and their subsequent propagation to the economy. The struggle between groups that disagree on targeted public spending (e.g., pork) results in governments being endogenously short-sighted:...

This paper incorporates two features of housing in a life-cycle analysis of social security: housing as a durable good and housing market frictions. We find that both housing quantities and homeownership rates respond strongly to eliminating social security. Accordingly, the aggregate impacts of...

This paper analyzes the quantitative role of idiosyncratic uncertainty in an economy in which rational agents vote on hypothetical social security reforms. We find that the role of a pay-as-you-go social security system as a partial insurance and redistribution device significantly reduces...