Emeryville, CA's Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWO) aimed to reduce service workers' schedule unpredictability by requiring large retail and food service employers to provide advanced notice of schedules and to compensate workers for last-minute schedule changes. From a 1-in-6 sample of Emeryville...

This paper explores the effects of relative food prices on body weight and body fat over time in China. We study a cohort of 15,000 adults from over 200 communities in China, using the longitudinal China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991-2006). While we find that decreases in the price of...

In this paper I analyze several issues related to contagion,' including its definition, recent experiences, alternative channels at work, and possible prevention mechanisms. The discussion deals with the macroeconomics implications of contagion, and concentrates on the relationship between the...

After decades of trial, error, and occasional regress the pieces of a successful Latin American economic model can be seen scattered among the leading economies of the region. The most traditional macroeconomic maladies of the emerging world - such as chronic fiscal imbalances and monetary...

In the early 1990s, after decades of high inflation and financial repression, Argentina embarked on a course of macroeconomic and bank regulatory reform. Bank regulatory policy promoted privatization, financial liberalization, and free entry, limited safety net support, and established a novel...

The Asian Crisis has highlighted the importance of strong domestic financial systems in overall economic development and stabilization. Less agreement is evident on the role of foreign banks in achieving this goal. We explore this issue by studying bank-specific data on lending by domestically-...

This work explores how Argentina overcame the Great Depression and asks whether active macroeconomic interventions made any contribution to the recovery. In particular, we study Argentine macroeconomic policy as it deviated from gold-standard orthodoxy after the final suspension of...

Argentina's money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. The banking sector was awash with bad assets that built up in the 1920's. Gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929, even before the crisis seriously damaged the core economies. Commonly, these events are seen as...

This essay considers some prescriptions that are currently popular regarding exchange rate regimes: a general movement toward floating, a general movement toward fixing, or a general movement toward either extreme and away from the middle. The whole spectrum from fixed to floating is covered...

This paper examines business cycles theoretically and empirically, with a quantitative study based on experience over the long run and in a cross section of countries. Several major questions in business cycle theory are explored. Theoretical concerns indicate that the properties of business...