Chile and Mexico experienced severe economic crises in the early 1980s. This paper analyzes four possible explanations for why Chile recovered much faster than did Mexico. Comparing data from the two countries allows us to rule out a monetarist explanation, an explanation based on falls in real...

In a partially reformed economy, distortions beget distortions. Segments of the economy which are freed from centralized control respond to the rent seeking opportunities implicit in the remaining distortions of the economy. The battle to capture, and then protect, these rents leads to the...

While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successful transitions, the latter largely in the former Soviet Union, raises many...

This paper deals with the reform to labor market regulation implemented by Chile during the last twenty years. We concentrate on the reform to job security, on the decentralization of the wage bargaining process, and on the reduction in payroll taxes. Our interest is to understand to what extent...

Chile has become a model for reforming economies throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political and economic circumstances surrounding Chile's unilateral trade liberalization during five stages (covering the period 1974-1990s),each being characterized by different...

We present a model of endogenous institutional change that rationalizes reforms that have taken place in the context of economic crisis and drastic political change. Most of the reforms have been initiated by powerholders, even though they have ended worse off relative to the status quo. The...

Recently, a large number of countries have undertaken major reforms that have led to a large increase in the number of new enterprises. After these reforms, however, it has taken a number of years before output and productivity have begun to grow. The thesis of this paper is that the process of...

Broadly speaking, two schools of thought have emerged to interpret China's rapid growth since 1978:the experimentalist school and the convergence school. The experimentalist school attributes China's successes to the evolutionary, experimental, and incremental nature of China's reforms....

We develop a framework to study the effects of policies of uncertain duration on consumption dynamics under both complete and incomplete markets. We focus on the dynamic implications of market incompleteness, specifically on the lack of state-contingent bonds. Two policies are considered: pure...