We explore the welfare costs of inflation originating from lack of liquidity satiation for Weimar Republic's hyperinflation and three high-inflation countries. Towards the peak of Weimar's hyperinflation the costs are estimated to have been equal to nearly 20 per cent of income. For Israel,...

This paper studies empirically the relationship between trade policy and individual income risk faced by workers. The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, longitudinal data on workers are used to estimate time-varying individual income risk parameters in various manufacturing sectors. The...

Small area poverty estimates are important for social and economic policy, however the required data are often unavailable. This paper presents a Small Area Estimation (SAE) technique called Conditional Monte Carlo (CMC). CMC provides robust estimates of small area poverty rates, subject to...

While providing the most reliable method of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the chances of adopting them. In this paper we use a unique data set from rural Mexico...

This paper analyzes the performance of Mexican manufacturing firms following trade liberalization within a very specific institutional setting: The North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). We compare plants' productivity growth and patterns of job creation and destruction across their...

This paper analyzes how enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border has affected the market for migrant smugglers. Using a unique dataset that links border crossing histories from illegal Mexican migrants to aggregate enforcement and punishment statistics, we find that the effect of enforcement on...

We analyze mobility in urban Mexico between three labor market states: working in the formal sector, working in the informal sector, and not working. We use a dynamic multinomial logit panel data model with random effects, explaining the labor market state of each individual during each time...

We analyze wage differentials mobility between the formal and informal sector in urban Mexico, using panel data on five quarters drawn from Mexico?s Urban Employment Survey. We develop a dynamic random effects panel data model. It consists of two separate wage equations for the two sectors and a...