Growing international financial integration has implied greater threat of contagion across borders, requiring quicker response to crises. However, financial—and trade—integration have been accompanied by the spread of democracy and political participation. Do more voices in the political...

The more severe a financial crisis, the greater has been the likelihood of its management under an IMFsupported program and shorter the time from crisis onset to program initiation. Political links to the United States have raised program likelihood but have prompted faster response mainly for...

We investigate the impact of corporate taxation on capital stock. In the paper, we indicate that corporate taxation might not only distort the decision of each firm to invest but could also destroy firms. With this in mind, we estimate capital demand equations, correcting for self-selection in...

This paper analyzes the recent evolution and the actual level of international reserves in Chile using complementary approaches. First, we compare the current level of international reserves of Chile with other countries, using as controls a set of indicators that are traditionally used in the...

In the last ten years the Chilean mutual fund industry has multiplied its assets around fivefold. In particular, money market funds have become important players in the financial sector as investors in time deposits as well as intermediating funds of the corporate sector. Given the importance of...

We analyze the IMF as a lender to countries in financial distress, highlighting the fact that it is a senior creditor. One advantage of delegating senior lending to a single institution rather than to competitive markets is that the former would be able to reach the socially optimal solution....

We study empirically if countries that default on their debt experience a reduction in their capital inflows as suggested by the literature. Our data contains information on (i) the defaulter countries and their creditors and (ii) bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. With this we can...

We study steady state optimal taxation in a context where firms differ in productivity and they decide whether to produce or not after comparing after-tax profits vis-à-vis an outside alternative option. The government taxes capital income, firms’ profits and labor income, but does not tax...