How do aspirations influence investment decisions for people living in poverty? Does this change as peoples economic conditions improve? To answer these questions, we design a workshop teaching techniques to raise aspirations and plan to achieve them. We cross-randomise this with large...

The paper provides an integrated analysis of globalization effects on the inflation-output tradeoff and monetary policy in the New-Keynesian framework. The prediction of the analysis is threefold. First, labor, goods, and capital mobility flatten the Phillips curve, the tradeoff between...

This paper develops a view of exchange rate policy as a trade-off between the desire to smooth fluctuations in real exchange rates so as to reduce distortions in consumption allocations, and the need to allow flexibility in the nominal exchange rate so as to facilitate terms of trade adjustment....

We explore Tinbergen's fundamental insight that policymakers need at least as many policy instruments as targets. We extend this idea using a large natural field experiment in water resource management. We use social comparisons and loss-framed messages to help achieve two goals of our partner...

We show that even when the exchange rate cannot be devalued, a small set of conventional fiscal instruments can robustly replicate the real allocations attained under a nominal exchange rate devaluation in a dynamic New Keynesian open economy environment. We perform the analysis under...

This paper points out the similarities and differences between cost-benefit analysis and tax reform. By restricting the analysis to the margin it is shown that both areas can be handled by the same method. In both areas, there is a need to define social distributional weights and to evaluate the...