In recent years, reducing poverty has been a core objective of social policy in Latin America. In2008, the incidence of poverty reached almost a third of the population, of which 13 percent areclassified as extremely poor. Most Latin American countries have invested vast resources inpoverty...

The purpose of this thesis is a characterization of the monetary regime followed by the Brazilian authorities during the 80's and beginning of the 90's, and its consequences for the credibility of anti-inflationary policies, the solvency condition of the government, and the power of restrictive...

This dissertation explores two subjects. The first one is the relationship between low liquidity in secondary markets for capital and the insufficient supply of long term funding for productive investment. The first chapter shows how shallow or non-existent secondary markets for capital can...

The impact of an ageing population on the economy is one of the key issues in most developed countries. It is a generally accepted notion that an ageing population could cause negative effects, including a decrease of per-capita output and economic welfare, on the economy mainly due to the...

The Introductory chapter briefly describes the unintended emergence of the seconday market for developing country loans after protracted and unsuccessful negotiations between lending bankers and the indebted countries. The innovative Brady plan presented the banks involved in this market with...

The authors present a theoretical model in which a profit-maximizing lender may ration credit to businesses by restricting loan size. Such credit rationing occurs despite the absence of differences across borrowers in default risk or loan administration costs. Moreover, the model predicts an...

This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of the commercial loan market in which liquidity constraints arise endogenously because of imperfect information and imperfect competition. The information and market structure generate a discriminatory interest rate schedule and loan size...