We document a striking empirical regularity: Latin American savings rates are as a rule substantially less procyclical than for OECD countries and in some cases are actually countercyclical. We build a non-representative agent inter-temporal macroeconomic model that rationalizes this phenomenon...

We present a model of endogenous institutional change that rationalizes reforms that have taken place in the context of economic crisis and drastic political change. Most of these reforms have been initiated by powerholders, even though they have ended worse-off relative to the status quo. The...

We argue that allowing for the possibility of a self-fulfilling panic helps understand several features of the recent Mexican crisis. Self-fulfilling expectations became decisive in generating a panic only after the government ran down gross reserves and ran up short-term dollar debt. We present...

We argue that allowing for the possibility of a self-fulfilling panic helps understand several features of the recent Mexican Crisis. We present a simple model too explain how and why multiple equilibria can occur for some levels of reserves or debt, but not for others.

In this paper we closely exemine the financial events following the Mexican peso devaluation to uncover new lesons about the nature of financial crises.

The remarkable turnaround of the Mexican economy and the evolution of the banking problem is of interest in its own right. In addition, it is of interest to policy makers in other countries where debt-servicing difficulties and foreign exchange crisis have forced adjustment measures. In this...