In the United States and a few European countries, inventory behavior is mainly the outcome of demand shocks: a standard buffer-stock model best characterizes these economies. But most European countries are described by a modified buffer-stock model where supply shocks dominate. In contrast to...

This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and welfare effects of extending the averaging period used to calculate pension benefits in a pay-as-you-go system. It also examines the complementarities between reforms extending the averaging period and those increasing the retirement age under...

Why do prices in Spain's regions fail to converge? The prime suspects for this puzzling result are differences in regional barriers to entry in retail distribution. This paper develops a Cournot-Nash model of imperfect competition to illustrate the effect of barriers on prices. A unique data...

Recurring balance of payments crises in countries that pursued import substitution have led some of them to establish a variety of export incentives, in particular subsidies, as a way to revive and re-orient their economies. However, exporters are likely to be uncertain of the government`s...

This paper develops a model to estimate the effects of export subsidies on the supply of exports. Using data for Costa Rica over the 1980`s, it is shown that while the export subsidy scheme in operation led to an increase in exports, the direct fiscal costs of the scheme were quite large....

This paper examines the short-run links between money growth, exchange rate depreciation, nominal wage growth, the output gap, and inflation in Chile, Korea, Mexico, and Turkey, using a generalized vector autoregression analysis. Nominal historical wage shocks are shown to have an important...