This paper compares the welfare costs and initial dynamics of three alternative inflation stabilization policies using the staggered price model with imperfect credibility and currency substitution developed by Calvo and Vegh (1990). In addition to the policies analyzed by Calvo and Vegh...

This paper explores the relationship between the health of the financial sector and the rest of the economy. We develop an indicator of financial sector health using a distance-to-default measure based on a Merton-style option pricing model. Our measure spans over three decades and appears to...

We analyze how public debt evolves when successive policymakers have different policy goals and cannot make credible commitments about their future policies. We consider several cases to be able to disentangle and quantify the respective effects of imperfect commitment and political...