Understanding differences in business cycle phenomena between Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and industrialized countries has been at the center of recent research on macroeconomic fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of certain credit market imperfections...

We use a dynamic general-equilibrium model to study how removing barriers to competition in the nontraded goods sector affects the current account of a small open economy. We show that the expansion of the nontraded sector that results from such a "deregulation shock" is associated with an...

In this paper, we first introduce investment-specific technology (IST) shocks to an otherwise standard international real business cycle model and show that a thoughtful calibration of them along the lines of Raffo (2009) successfully addresses the quantity, international comovement,...

Credit constraints that link a private agent’s debt to market-determined prices embody a credit externality that drives a wedge between competitive and constrained socially optimal equilibria, inducing private agents to overborrow. The externality arises because agents fail to internalize the...

A puzzle in international macroeconomics is that observed real exchange rates are highly volatile. Standard international real business cycle (IRBC) models cannot reproduce this fact. We show that total factor productivity processes for the United States and the rest of the world are...

We study the labor market effects of bilateral exchange rate realignment. We place emphasis on the composition of trade, the role of intermediates, and the underlying conditions of the labor market. Employment effects hinge on the fraction exported to and imported from the trading partner. A...

Financial stability is an important policy objective, since crises are associated with large economic, social and political costs. Promoting stability requires preventing 'sudden stops' in capital flows, which are events in which foreign financing abruptly disappears. This paper contributes to...

This paper analyzes the relevance of external factors in average quarterly GDP growth for 1990-2006 in the seven largest Latin American countries (LAC7). Modeling the relationship between LAC7 GDP and several external factors, it is found that those factors account for a significant share of...

Using a sample of 110 developed and developing countries for the period 1990-2004, this paper analyzes the characteristics of systemic sudden stops (3S) in capital flows and the relevance of balance-sheet effects in the likelihood of their materialization. A small supply of tradable goods...