The paper holds that the country risk premium is the triggering factor of the business cycle in a small, financially open and highly volatile economy like that of Argentina. A rise of the premium determines a capital outflow, an aggregate demand contraction and a recession; a fall of the premium...

In this paper we do a couple of things: discussing a way to measure the welfare cost of country risk, and measuring it for Argentina in the period 1875-2006. There are two conclusions: a) the welfare cost of Argentine risk has been huge: for example, in the period 1976-2006 it was around 20% of...

En este ensayo desarrollamos la idea del riesgo-país en la visión del autor, sintetizamos el pensamiento pionero de Arnold Harberger y los recientes progresos de Joshua Aizenman, hacemos un balance de las visiones del fenómeno, e ilustramos el nuevo enfoque mediante algunas aplicaciones. El...

The purpose of the essay is to investigate the proposition that a free-trade treaty with a superpower is more effective in promoting exports, investment and per capita growth than a unilateral opening to free trade. To that end we study five success stories: Chile (unilateral opening), Mexico...

The paper combines a brief review of basic monetary theory, a discussion of the critical monetary and banking experience underwent by Argentina between 1980 and 2002, an essay on the stability of velocity of circulation and a proposal for reform. Our thesis is that after a hyperinflation episode...

Este ensayo fue escrito originalmente en 1987, como un panfleto a favor del equilibrio fiscal. La situación económica argentina era entonces definitivamente distinta y peor. En esta oportunidad, he agregado un conjunto de estimaciones econométricas sobre las relaciones entre el déficit...