This paper analyzes and employs two versions of the Functional Central Limit Theorem within the framework of a unit root with a structural break. Initial attention is focused on the probabilistic structure of the time series to be considered. Later, attention is placed on the asymptotic theory...

Under inflation targeting and other related monetary policy regimes, the identication of non-transitory inflation and forecasts about future inflation constitute key ingredients for monetary policy decisions. In practice, central banks perform these tasks using so-called "core inflation...

Some stylized facts for foreign exchange and stock market returns are explored using statistical methods. Formal statistics for testing presence of autocorrelation, asymmetry, and other deviations from normality are applied to these ?nancial returns. Dynamic correlations and di¤erent kernel...

I use three non-linear econometric models to identify and analyze business cycles in the Peruvian economy for the period 1980:1-2008:4. The models are the Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) model suggested by Teräsvirta (1994), the extended version of the Markov-Switching model proposed by...

Under what circumstances does collective action arise? What contributes to the likelihood that a particular collective initiative will succeed? To what extent are poor communities capable of organizing themselves to improve their quality of life? These questions are not new, and economic...

To assess the employment effects of labor costs it is crucial to have reliable estimates of the labor cost elasticity of labor demand. Using a matched firm-worker dataset, we estimate a long run unconditional labor demand function, exploiting information on workers to correct for endogeneity in...

According to the 2003 National Household Survey, mean labour income for an indigenous worker is only 56 percent of that for a non-indigenous worker. Studies of ethnic discrimination in Peru’s labour markets generally find that discrimination is too low to explain inequalities of this...

In this paper we study the determinants of inflows of foreign capital in Latin American countries. We consider the usual factors included in other studies in the literature: market size, infrastructure development, and wages. To obtain a improved measure of market size we adjust GDP by a poverty...

This study aims at understanding the behavior of economic elites in the Third World. Because economic elites concentrate the property of physical capital in society, their actions influence the living conditions of the masses. The literature on the elite’s behavior is, however, very...

Since the middle of 1997, a health reform in the Peruvian social security system was implemented in order to improve the efficiency in the sector, to raise the quality of its services, and to extend its coverage to uncovered sectors, within a framework solidarity and equality. However, after...