This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of China's 2009-2010 fiscal stimulus package by simulating a dynamic general equilibrium multi-country model of the world economy, showing that the effects on China's economic activity are sizeable: absent fiscal stimulus China's GDP would be 2.6 and...

We study the welfare and macroeconomic implications of simple and implementable fiscal policy rules in commodity-dependent economies, where a large share of output, exports, and government revenues depend on exogenous and volatile commodity prices. Using a multi-sector New Keynesian model...

This paper documents how informal employment in Mexico is countercyclical, lags the cycle and is negatively correlated to formal employment. This contributes to explaining why total employment in Mexico displays low cyclicality and variability over the business cycle when compared to Canada, a...

This paper evaluates from a welfare perspective three policy alternatives for dealing with Dutch disease problems originating from cyclical movements in commodity prices: fiscal rules for government expenditures, capital controls, and taxes on domestic lending. A DSGE model of a small open...

This paper studies the effect of demographic transitions on the economy of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The paper builds a model of multi-regions of the world and derives the path of macroeconomic variables including aggregate output, capital, labor and the saving rate as economies...

This paper studies whether policymakers should wait to intervene until a financial crisis strikes or rather act in a preemptive manner. This question is examined in a relatively simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which crises are endogenous events induced by the presence of...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a new policy paradigm has emerged in which old-fashioned policies such as capital controls and other government distortions have become part of the standard policy tool kit (so called macro- prudential policies). On the wave of this seemingly...

This paper reviews the recent experience of a half-dozen Latin American inflation targeting (IT) nations. Repeated and large deviations from the standard IT framework are documented: exchange market interventions have been lasting and widespread; the real exchange rate has often become a target of...

Stochastic general equilibrium models of small open economies with occasionally binding financial frictions are capable of mimicking both the business cycles and the crisis events associated with the sudden stop in access to credit markets (Mendoza, 2010). This paper studies the inefficiencies...

Financial crises in both emerging and developed economies have been characterized by large output drops and spikes in unemployment and interest rates. To account for these stylized facts this paper builds a business cycle model where financial and labor market frictions interact as occasionally...