This paper shows the way how persistent world inflation shocks hitting a small open economy can re-weight the importance of domestic and foreign factors in the determination of prices. In this sense, we study why the recently observed global disinflation environment may imply a weakening of the...

We examine the impact of public information in an economy where agents also have diverse private information. Our work builds on seminal contributions by Townsend (1983) and Phelps (1983), and more recently Woodford (2002), which emphasized the importance of higher-order beliefs – that is,...

There are two crucial conditions for cross-sectional aggregation of AR(1) parameters to produce long memory: 1) heterogeneity and 2) proximity to the unit root. We analyze role of moments, namely the mean and variance, of the distribution of the AR(1) coefficients in generating long memory. The...

This paper develops a model which can explain the hump-shaped impulse response of inflation to a monetary shock. A standard New Keynesian (NK) model is augmented so as to include dynamic externality with sticky wages and variable capital utilization. In our analysis, we assume purely...

Inflation can “grease†the wheels of the labor market by relaxing downward wage rigidity but it can also increase uncertainty and have a negative “sand†effect. This paper studies the grease effect of inflation by looking at whether the interaction between inflation and labor...

Extending recent theoretical contributions on sources of inflation inertia, we argue that monetary uncertainty accounts for sluggish expectations adjustment to nominal disturbances. Estimating a model in which rational individuals learn over time about shifts in U.S. monetary policy and the...

Latin American economies are exposed to ubstantial external vulnerability. Domestic imbalances and terms of trade shocks are often exacerbated by sudden financial distress. In this paper we explore ways of overcoming external vulnerability drawing lessons from a detailed comparison of the...

This paper investigates whether the presence of financial frictions can help explain the differences in the variability of output and inflation between the Pre- and the Post-Volcker periods. I use a limited participation model with credit market imperfections, in which financial frictions may...

Most work showing the yield curve predicts future economic growth relies on post WWII data. We demonstrate that the yield curve has predictive content for most of the post Civil War period. This predictive ability, however, is closely related to the credibility of the monetary regime in place,...

This paper revisits the Chilean experience with dollarization, indexation and nominalization in the 1958-2003 period. The purpose is to understand how Chile generally avoided dollarization and actually dedollarized in the 80s in order to draw some lessons for other countries. We find that many...