Several European countries face challenges reminiscent of those faced by the emerging economies of Latin America. The economic booms in some peripheral Euro-zone countries financed by large capital inflows; the credit and asset price booms and then the busts including Sudden Stops in capital...

This paper investigates the relevance of business saving for private saving and investment around the world by constructing and exploiting a broad international, unbalanced panel of 64 countries over 1990-2012. The paper shows that businesses are the main contributors to private and national...

Using panel co-integration techniques and a comprehensive dataset covering the period 1980-2013, this paper finds a positive and significant correlation between national saving and domestic investment rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The estimated correlation is approximately 0.39;...

This paper proposes a new taxonomy of Sudden Stops comprised of seven categories with definitions depending on the behavior of gross and net capital flows. The incidence of different types of Sudden Stops is tracked over time and the type of Sudden Stop related to economic performance. Sudden...

This paper examines the short and long-run average causal impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth by combining information from comparative case studies. The counterfactual of the cases studied is assessed by constructing synthetic control groups, taking advantage of the fact...

This paper uses simple regression techniques to make an initial assessment of the monetary damages caused by the January 12, 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. Damages are estimated for a disaster with both 200,000 and 250,000 total dead and missing (i.e., the range of mortality that the...