Information regarding economic fundamentals is widely dispersed in society, is only imperfectly aggregated through prices or other indicators of aggregate activity, and cannot be centralized by the government or any other institution. In this paper we seek to identify policies that can improve...

Introduction to the theory of international trade and finance with applications to current policy issues. From the course home page: Course Description The course will help us understand what determines the flow of goods across countries, i.e. international trade, and what determines the flow of...

We argue that one reason why emerging economies borrow short term is that it is cheaperthan borrowing long term. This is especially the case during crises, as in these episodes therelative cost of long-term borrowing increases. We construct a unique database of sovereignbond prices, returns, and...

This thesis includes four essays on the macroeconomic effects of financial market imperfections. The first essay studies the incentives for banks that participate in an interbank market to keep a sufficient level of reserves. It presents a model where, in presence of imperfect insurance against...

This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed informationabout the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and—potentially—shocks tomonopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significantinertia in the...

Economics

How does uncertainty and credit constraints affect the cyclical composition of investment and thereby volatility and growth? This paper addresses this question within a model where firms engage in two types of investment: a short-term one; and a long-term one, which contributes more to...

This paper investigates how incomplete information impacts the response of prices to nominalshocks. Our baseline model is a variant of the Calvo model in which firms observe the underlyingnominal shocks with noise. In this model, the response of prices is pinned down by threeparameters: the...