This paper presents empirical support for the existence of wealth effects in the contribution of financial intermediation to economic growth, and offers a theoretical explanation for these effects. Using GMM dynamic panel data techniques applied to study the growth-promoting effects of financial...

This paper analyses the asymptotic behavior of the Engle-Granger t-test for cointegration when the data include structural breaks, instead of being pure I(1) processes. We find that the test does not possess a limiting distribution, but diverges as the sample size tends to infinity. Calculations...

In this article we analyze the treasury securities primary auctions of the Mexican Federal Government, using a structural econometric model of Février, Préget and Visser (2002). This model allows to make revenue comparisons across auction formats. Our analysis shows the revenue superiority of...

Empirical research on the degree and stability of inflation persistence in the US has produced mixed results: some suggest high and unchanged persistence during the last few decades, while others argue in favor of a decline in persistence since the early 1980s. We show that post-WWII US...

In this paper we examine the effect of having an inflation targeting framework on the dispersion of inflation forecasts from professional forecasters. We use a panel data set of 26 countries -including 14 inflation targeters- with monthly information from the last 16 years. We find that the...

This paper reviews the role of monetary policy in the disinflation process that has taken place in the Mexican economy in recent years. The purpose is to show that, once an economy establishes a sustainable fiscal position, an inflation targeting framework can be seen as an efficient mechanism...

In a typical developing country, coverage of the contributory social security system is low. We analyze the aggregate effects of a revenue-neutral fiscal-cum-social policy reform that consists of: 1) the implementation of universal social insurance to replace the system with low coverage; and 2)...

Current data provide macroeconomic information for a large number of countries and for a long period of time (macro panels). This causes that in these panels slope heterogeneity and cross-section dependence (CSD) are a rule rather than the exception, leading to fixed effects slope estimators to...

I review a contemporary branch of the informal sector literature that focus on understanding the way firm behavior is affected by the presence of informality and how such distortions have an impact on aggregate variables. The authors in this group all make use of dynamic general equilibrium...

We present evidence on the impact on students' math and reading scores of one of the largest deployments of an OLPC program and the only one implemented at a national scale: Plan Ceibal in Uruguay. We have unique data that allow us to know the exact date of laptop delivery for every student in...