What drove western population growth in the U.S. during the 19th century? The facts are: (i) The birth ratio was higher in the West than in the East. Both exhibited a secular decline. (ii) Between 1800 and 1810 net migration accounted for 88% of the rate of population growth in the northwest...

Social norms are influenced by the technological environment that a society faces. Behavioral modes reflect purposive decision making by individuals, given the environment they live in. Thus, as technology changes, so might social norms. There were big changes in social norms during the 20th...

There prevails a view that the monetary policy in the Euro area has changed, especially after the European Monetary System (EMS) came into operation in 1979. The goal of this paper is to quantify (1) the extent to which policy regime has changed and (2) the counterfactual effects of such regimes...

This paper finds a solution to some of the discrepancies between the data and what standard complete markets models predict. Specifically, those related to the cross-country correlations of consumption, output and factors of production. I match the data and get positive cross country comovements...

This paper builds a simple theoretical model designed to study dollarization. Each period, a benevolent government decides whether or not to dollarize, how much to borrow or lend on an international bond market, and, if dollarization has not occurred, the devaluation rate. In equilibrium,...

A central debate in applied macroeconomics is whether statistical tools that use minimal identifying assumptions are useful for isolating promising models within a broad class. In this paper, I extend the analysis of Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2005) to compare four statistical...