Uncertainty about the riskiness of new financial products was an important factor behind the U.S. credit crisis. We show that a boom-bust cycle in debt, asset prices and consumption characterizes the equilibrium dynamics of a model with a collateral constraint in which agents learn ""by...

This paper studies overborrowing, financial crises and macro-prudential policy in an equilibrium model of business cycles and asset prices with collateral constraints. Agents in a decentralized competitive equilibrium do not internalize the negative effects of asset fire-sales on the value of...

An implication of the ""globalization hazard"" hypothesis is that sudden stops could be prevented by offering foreign investors price guarantees on emerging markets assets. These guarantees create a tradeoff, however, because they weaken globalization hazard by creating international moral...

A dynamic stochastic equilibrium model of a small open economy is used to quantify the macroeconomic effects of introducing capital controls to stabilize the balance of trade. This model focuses on the role of international trade and foreign debt as instruments that help smooth consumption in...

This paper examines trade reforms of uncertain duration undertaken in economies subject to real foreign and domestic shocks. These reforms induce consumption and import booms regardless of whether they succeed or fail and of the degree of intertemporal elasticity of substitution. If tariff...

Financial globalization was off to a rocky start in emerging economies hit by Sudden Stops in the 1990s. The surge in foreign reserves since then is viewed as a New Merchantilism in which reserves are a war-chest for defense against Sudden Stops. We conduct a quantitative assessment of this...

Theory predicts that a nation''s stochastic intertemporal budget constraint is satisfied if net exports (NX) and net foreign assets (NFA) satisfy an error-correction specification with a residual integrated of any finite order. We test this hypothesis using data for 21 industrial and 29 emerging...

Harberger’s superneutrality conjecture contends that, although in theory the mix of direct and indirect taxes affects investment and growth, in practice growth effects of taxation are negligible. This paper provides evidence in support of this view by testing the predictions of endogenous...