This paper investigates the economic and social consequences of sovereign default on external debt. We focus on the crises' impact on real per capita GDP, infant mortality, life expectancy, poverty headcounts, and calorie supply per capita. After methodological exclusions, the sample covers 221...

The quot;traditional structural approachquot; to the determination of real commodity prices has relied exclusively on demand factors as the fundamentals that explain the behavior of commodity prices. This framework, however, has been unable to explain the marked and sustained weakness in...

We develop a novel system of re-classifying historical exchange rate regimes. One difference between our study and previous classification efforts is that we employ an extensive data base on market-determined parallel exchange rates. Our 'natural' classification algorithm leads to a stark...