This paper develops a large-scale, dynamic life-cycle model to simulate Russia's demographic and fiscal transition under favorable and unfavorable fossil-fuel price regimes. The model includes Russia, the U.S., China, India, the EU, and Japan+ (Japan plus Korea). The model predicts dramatic...

A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the west. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

Uncertainty appears to jump up after major shocks like the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination of JFK, the OPEC I oil-price shock and the 9/11 terrorist attack. This paper offers a structural framework to analyze the impact of these uncertainty shocks. I build a model with a time varying...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and labor market policies in a small open developing country. The basic framework considers an economy with a large informal production sector and a heterogeneous work force. The labor market is segmented as a result of efficiency...

This paper develops our analytical model to explore the relationship between the dynamics of macroeconomic adjustment and the timing of the implementation of an adjustment program featuring an official devaluation. The effects of postponing adjustment depend on the source of the original shock,...

We ask whether recent changes in monetary policy due to the financial crisis will be temporary or permanent. We present evidence from two surveys--one of central bank governors, the other of academic specialists. We find that central banks in crisis countries are more likely to have resorted to...

Why did some countries learn to grow up to financial stability and others not? We explore this question by surveying the key determinants and major policy responses to banking, currency, and debt crises between 1880 and present. We divide countries into three groups: leaders, learners, and...

We analyze the degree to which the growing importance of sovereign wealth funds [SWFs] and the diffusion of inflation targeting and augmented Taylor rules have impacted the post crisis adjustment of Latin American Countries (LATAM) to the challenges associated with terms of trade and financial...

In this paper we first trace the changing nature of banking, currency and debt crises from the last century to the present. Each type of crisis has transmogrified in the presence of official intervention and the creation of a safety net. A similar pattern is observed for international rescue...

The COVID-19 epidemic in emerging markets risks a combined health, economic, and debt crisis. We integrate a standard epidemiology model into a sovereign default model and study how default risk impacts the ability of these countries to respond to the epidemic. Lockdown policies are useful for...