We test for the populist view of inflation in Latin America between 1970 and 2007. The empirical results - based on the relatively novel panel time-series data and analysis - confirm the theoretical prediction that recently elected governments coming into power after periods of political...

In this paper we investigate the role of financial development, or more widespread access to all sorts of finance, in generating economic growth in four Latin American countries between 1980 and 2007. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, confirm the Schumpeterian prediction...

The standard two-sector monetary business cycle model suffers from an important deficiency. Since durable good prices are more flexible than non-durable good prices, optimising households build up the stock of durable goods at low cost after a monetary contraction. Consequently, sectoral outputs...

Empirical studies show that job search behavior depends on the financial situation of the unemployed. Starting from this observation, we ask how unemployment insurance policy should take the individual financial situation into account. We use a quantitative model with a realistically calibrated...

This paper studies the structure and dynamics of consumption and consumption growth inequality. The theoretical framework is a heterogeneous agent model with stochastic labor endowments, where the group mean consumption serves as consumption externality. The main finding is that households'...