There is a well-known set of empirical regularities that describe the experience of countries that peg their exchange rate as part of a macroeconomic adjustment program. Following the peg economies tend to experience an increase in GDP, a large expansion of production in the non-tradable sector,...

This paper analyzes two-way interactions between structural reform and macro policy. If structural reforms increase the flexibility of labor markets, they are likely to improve the short-run inflation-unemployment tradeoff, providing an incentive for policymakers to expand aggregate demand....

We analyze market impediments to the process of structural adjustment. We focus on incomplete-contract inefficiencies in the transactions between workers and firms that render the quasi-rents from 'specific' investment appropriable. During adjustment, the result is a depressed rate of creation...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and labor market policies in a small open developing country. The basic framework considers an economy with a large informal production sector and a heterogeneous work force. The labor market is segmented as a result of efficiency...

In this paper we argue that many topics in macroeconomics can be viewed as part of the broader theory of the economics of adjustment. We argue that existing approaches to the economics of adjustment take a very narrow view of the role of information. We outline an approach to this topic that...

In the United States, many industries have a Silicon Valley-type geographic localization. In Europe, these same industries often have four or more major centers of production. This difference is presumably the result of the formal and informal trade barriers that have divided the European...

This paper presents a simple diagrammatic analysis of an open economy's external adjustment process under habit-forming individual preferences. The exposition focuses on the consumption side and aims to make transparent the linkage among wealth, past consumption experience, and current...

The basic premise of this paper is that understanding aggregate dynamics requires considering that agents are heterogeneous and that they do not adjust continuously to the shocks they perceive. We provide a general characterization of lumpy behavior at the microeconomic level in terms of an...

This paper provides definitions and measures of the extent of adaptability of an economy to exogenous changes in product prices, factor availability and technological change. It is argued that flexibility can in general only be defined relative to the exogenous changes that occur. Using a dual...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a typology of different labor market configurations and investigate how two major structural adjustment policies, namely a trade liberalization reform and the relaxation of capital controls, affect the level of aggregate employment and the rate of...