Although the application of the conceptual and analytical framework of economics to the study of populism is still in its infancy, great advances have been made in recent years. This paper reviews some key contributions behind this progress. When analyzing populism, economists face two...

One of the main reasons to dollarize an emerging market economy is to eliminate high, persistent, and volatile inflation. To be effective, dollarization must generate sufficient credibility, which in turn depends critically on whether its expected probability of reversal is low. Argentina once...

We offer a critique of a paper recently published Lorenzoni and Werning (2023) that seeks to make a) an original contribution to the hypothesis that inflation is primarily caused by conflict, and b) reconcile the Post-Keynesian and New-Keynesian traditions. In the first section, the authors...

We analyze a recent paper that claims that dollarizing an economy in the presence of a "dollar shortage" will provoke an immediate sharp reduction in real output and welfare. We find many problems with the model that supports this conclusion: confusion about the nature of a dollar shortage and...

Argentina's economic and institutional decline has long posed a conundrum to economists and social scientists. In particular, it challenges theories that seek to explain cross-country growth differences over time. Those theories that claim that institutions have a first-order effect on growth...

In the last three decades average inflation rates have declined around the world. Since 1995 the number of countries with inflation rates below 10% a year increased from 98 (54% of the total) to an average of 178 in 2015-2019 (90% of the total). In the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial...

After being dormant for decades, in the last two decades, right-wing populism resurfaced strongly in Europe and the US channeling a reaction against globalization. This resurgence has prompted economists to pay increasing attention to populist economics. Current versions of right wing populism...

Before Hugo Chavez burst into the political scene in Venezuela, Argentina's Juan Peron (1895- 1974) was considered the quintessential Latin American populist leader. He ruled Argentina from mid 1943 until September 1955 and between 1973 and 1974 and his political party has been in power two...