This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for...

A currency attack fails on its own when the speculator suffers from her financial problem. This paper extends the existing models and argues that the monetary authority?s willingness to peg and the speculator?s cost of attack are private information. Our model thus accounts for the duration of...

This paper presents a simple model of debt contracts in order to analyze the conditions under which domestic residents would choose to denominate debts in ``dollars''. In the model, borrowers are producers of non-traded goods, and subject to shocks on prices. The real exchange rate varies in...