All developed countries have government debt, usually a sizeable proportion of output. This paper proposes that governments that cannot commit to future policy choices face a trade-off that explains the level of debt. On the one hand, the government would like to increase debt and delay...

This paper examines the growth pattern followed by the Chilean economy with reference to the macroeconomic reforms undertaken during the Pinochet regime, which were largely maintained by successive democratic administrations and partially reproduced by neighbouring countries. The focus is on the...

The main rationale for fiscal policy rules is the concern for long term sustainability of public finances, that in a monetary union may affect the other members. Among many other criticisms, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been seen as contradictory or incomplete because it focuses on...

The paper discusses and revisits some of the most popular stories behind the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, i.e. the prolonged overvaluation of the peso owing to the Currency Board arrangement, the lack of fiscal adjustment, and the negative external environment which triggered a “sudden...

We analyze the endogenous appearance of money substitutes, their interaction with outside money, and resulting distortions in the price system of an economy with large monopolies and wide-spread informal networks. The economy consists of productive, individually optimizing agents and less...

Despite evidence that aggregate housing price are predictable, a random walk in time and independence in space are two maintained hypotheses in the empirical models for housing price measurement used by government and commercial companies. This paper examines the price discovery process in...

The paper exploits a unique panel, covering some 2,000 Italian manufacturing firms and 14 years of data on individual prices and individual interest rates paid on several types of debt, to address the question of the existence of a channel of transmission of monetary policy operating through the...

Liquidity traps occur when the natural nominal interest rate becomes negative. In a model with capital price dynamics explicitly considered, we find that shocks in the future can cause current and lasting liquidity traps. We propose that the central bank can prevent or fix liquidity traps by...

Recent research on the unobserved economy suggests that the phenomenon has important implications for both macroeconomic policy and public finance. Attention is focused on the public finance implications by developing a simple macro model from which it is possible to derive a Laffer curve. The...

The real effects of an imperfectly credible disinflation depend critically on the extent of price rigidity. Therefore, the study of how the policymaker's credibility affects the outcome of an announced disinflation should not be dissociated from the analysis of the determinants of the frequency...