Monthly, non-seasonally adjusted data are used to study markup behavior at the seasonal and business cycle frequency. The shift in focus to the monthly frequency provides an identification mechanism which helps to rule out several competing models for markup variation that would have been...

This article presents a general equilibrium model in which middlemen emerge to facilitate trade in an environment of idiosyncratic tastes and heterogeneous goods. The gains to the traders can be measured along three dimensions: The rate of production, the time-preference losses generated by the...

A major unresolved issue in business cycle theory is the construction of an endogenous propagation mechanism capable of capturing the amount of persistence displayed in the data. In this paper we explore the quantitative implications of one propagation mechanism: learning by doing. Estimation of...

The average cost of borrowing on international financial markets varies widely from nation to nation even after controlling for the varying levels of indebtedness of their governments. This suggests that markets assign country specific default risk assessments. In this paper we focus on one...

Sovereign spreads and the level of bureaucratic diversion of government spending vary widely across emerging economies and are correlated with each other. We build a sovereign default model where the government is constrained to use corrupt bureaucrats to deliver public goods and services in...

Three features of the international exchange rate data that are widely known are: (a) a high correlation between bilateral nominal and real exchange rates; (b) real exchange rate movements are highly persistent; and (c) real exchange rates are highly volatile. This paper attempts a joint, albeit...

Empirical studies suggest that fluctuations in the level and volatility of the world interest rate (as measured by the US treasury bill rate) affect sovereign spreads in emerging economies. We incorporate an estimated time-varying process for the world interest rate (with both level and...

This paper considers the importance of dynamic complementarities as an endogenous source of propagation in a dynamic stochastic economy. Dynamic complementarities link the stocks of human and organizational capital, which are influenced by past levels of economic activity, to current levels of...