The onset of the housing and subsequent financial crisis in 2008 marked the steepest economic downturn in the United. States, since the Great Depression in the late 1920s and 1930s. This most recent financial crisis has been characterized by massive layoffs and displacement. Given the depth of...

As is now well documented, aid is given for both political as well as economic reasons. The conventional wisdom is that politically-motivated aid is less effective in promoting developmental objectives. We examine the ex-post performance ratings of World Bank projects and generally find that...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of an intervention that was targeted at a specific group of Dutch Social Assistance (SA) recipients with debt problems. With a large share of the income gains of work resumption were transferred to the creditors, these individuals experienced a strong a...

Economic theory has identified a number of channels through which openness to international financial flows could raise productivity growth. However, while there is a vast empirical literature analyzing the impact of financial openness on output growth, far less attention has been paid to its...

This paper studies the direct impact of households' debt on consumption over the business cycle. We use household-level panel data for Spain, and focus on a interesting period of analysis, 2002-2017, characterized by large variations in leverage, consumption, and asset prices. We find that debt...

New York City is the hot spot of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. This paper merges information on the number of tests and the number of infections at the New York City zip code level with demographic and socioeconomic information from the decennial census and the American Community...

There is increasing evidence that the interaction between shocks and labour market institutions is crucial to understanding the dynamics of employment. In this paper, we show that the inclusion of labour adjustment costs in a trade model affects the impact of exchange rate movements on...

In this paper, we explore empirically the role of openness, technology and labour market rigidity in the determination of the effect of the exchange rate on employment in Portugal. We develop an index that allows us to measure labour market flexibility at the sector level. This index shows that...

This paper investigates whether exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into import prices is a nonlinear phenomenon for five heavily indebted Euro area countries, namely the so-called GIIPS group (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). Using logistic smooth transition models, we explore the...