Currency substitution (CS) and financial adaptation are in general believed to increase the equilibrium rate of inflation. This result derives from a setup in which the government finances a certain amount of real resources through money printing and where CS reduces the base of the inflation...

This paper estimates bond-by-bond "haircuts"-realized investor losses-in recent debt restructurings in Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Ecuador, Argentina, and Uruguay. We consider both external and domestic retructurings. Haircuts are computed as the percentage difference between the present values...

This paper develops a model with endogenous financial adaptation. With a representative agent, inflation and welfare increase upon introduction of financial adaptation. Once we allow for agents' heterogeneity, we can show that inflation still increases and that the "poor" are hurt, while the...

This brief overview highlights some of the most relevant aspects addressed in the different papers, concerning a wide range of countries in the world, in this especial issue devoted to economic growth. All papers have a common core: how economic policy affects growth, especially emphasizing the...

This paper computes debt relief and investor losses associated with the major emerging market defaults and debt restructurings of the 1998-2005 period. Investor losses ranged from 13% to 75%, based on comparing the market value of the new debt with the net present value of the old debt evaluated...

In this paper we model delayed stabilizations as the rational outcome of a distributional conflict between two risk averse groups in the presence of post-stabilization payoff uncertainty and costly policy reversion. We show that in the initial stages of an extreme inflation episode there is a...

This paper uses a structural VAR methodology to identify aggregate demand and supply shocks to real output for the South African economy. Demand shocks, in turn, are separated into fiscal and monetary shocks. The model is estimated with quarterly data over two overlapping samples: 1960Q2--2006Q4...

This paper clarifies how the valuation of hidden assets—what we call “dark matter”—changes our assessment of the U.S. external imbalance. Dark matter assets are defined as the capitalized value of the return privilege obtained by U.S. assets. Because this return privilege has been steady...

In this book, Federico Sturzenegger and Mariano Tommasi propose formal models to answer some of the questions raised by the recent reform experience of many Latin American and East European countries. They apply common standards of analytical rigor to the study of economic and political...

To the extent that they exert a critical influence on the macroeconomic environment, monetary and exchange rate policies (MERP) are relevant for development. However, the analytical economic literature often sees nominal variables as being irrelevant for the real economy, while the multiplicity...