Are there systematic forces such that countries of different sizes participating in a free trade bloc gain differently from the entry of new members? If economies of scale imply that firms located in large countries enjoy lower costs, then the gains from enlarging the bloc will fall...

Available studies on asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism within Europe are invariably based on macro-economic evidence: such evidence is abundant but often contradictory. This paper takes a different route by using micro-economic data. We use the information contained in the...

This paper studies household financial choices in four euro area countries. The goal of the analysis is to understand the sources of the differences in these choices and their implications for the impact of monetary policy on consumption. The estimation of key parameters uses a simulated method...

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost-minimization and measure each firm's liquidity shortfall during and after...

This paper explores the main channels of international transmission of economic disturbances under the Bretton Woods System and presents evidence on the short-run international transmission of inflation under that system. There appears to have been little short-run international transmission of...

This paper measures and compares the relative earnings of French and English speakers in Canada, and of Spanish and English speakers in the U.S., in the 1970s and 1980s. In Canada, the earnings gap between French and English speakers narrowed over time, especially in Quebec. This decline appears...

This paper studies the international transmission of business cycles by developing a two-country real business-cycle model and confronting it with a broad set of empirical observations. These observations include variances and covariances of output, labor, consumption, employment, and investment...

Many households hold little wealth, especially liquid wealth. In precautionary savings models, absent preference heterogeneity, these households should display not only higher marginal propensities to consume (MPCs), but also lower average propensities to consume (APCs) and higher future...

Industrialization experiences differ significantly across countries. We use a bench-mark model of structural change to shed light on the sources of this heterogeneity and, in particular, the phenomenon of premature deindustrialization. Our analysis leads to three key findings. First, benchmark...

This note lays out the basic Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model of contagion, with a target audience of economists who want a framework for understanding the effects of social distancing and containment policies on the evolution of contagion and interactions with the...