This paper examines the extent to which permanent terms-of-trade shocks have an asymmetric effect on private savings. The first part uses a simple three-period model to show that, if households expect to face binding borrowing constraints in bad states of nature, savings rates will respond...

This paper analyzes the implication of inefficient financial intermediation for crisis management in a country where firms are highly-indebted. The analysis is based on a model in which firms rely on bank credit to finance their working capital needs and lenders face high state verification and...

This paper examines the effect of volatility on the costs and benefits of financial market integration. The basic framework combines the costly state verification model and the contract enforceability approach. The welfare effects of financial market integration are assessed by comparing welfare...

This paper interprets contagion effects as a perceived increase (triggered by events occurring elsewhere) in the volatility of aggregate shocks impinging on the domestic economy. The implications of this approach are analyzed in a model with two types of credit market imperfections: domestic...

Since the early 1980s, wage dispersion and the ratio of skilled to unskilled employment have increased significantly in several industrial countries. A number of economists have attributed these trends to skill-biased technical progress. This paper studies the wage and employment effects of...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and labor market policies in a small open developing country. The basic framework considers an economy with a large informal production sector and a heterogeneous work force. The labor market is segmented as a result of efficiency...

This paper studies how capital market imperfections affect the welfare effects of forming a currency union. The analysis considers a bank-only world where intermediaries compete in Cournot fashion and monitoring and state verification are costly. The first part determines the credit market...

This paper studies the effects of contagion on bank lending spreads and output fluctuations in Argentina. The first part presents the analytical framework, which analyzes the determination of bank lending spreads in the presence of verification and enforcement costs of loan contracts. The second...

The paper proposes a two-step approach to assessing the extent to which the fall in credit in crisis-stricken East Asian countries was a supply- or demand-induced phenomenon. The first step is based on the estimation of a demand function for excess liquid assets by commercial banks. Such a...

A positive historical shock to external spreads can lead to an increase in domestic spreads and a reduction in the cyclical component of output. Shocks to external spreads immediately after the Mexican peso crisis had a sizable effect on movements in output and domestic interest rate spreads in...