Recent theoretical literature has suggested a variety of mechanisms through which poverty may deter growth and become self-perpetuating. A few papers have searched for empirical regularities consistent with those mechanisms – such as aggregate non-convexities and convergence clubs. However, a...

Consumption baskets vary across households and inflation rates vary across goods. As a result, standard consumer price index (CPI) inflation may provide a misleading measure of the inflation actually faced by poor households, more so the more unequal the distribution of aggregate consumption...

Using a large cross-country income distribution dataset spanning close to 800 country-year observations from industrial and developing countries, the authors show that the size distribution of per capita income is well approximated empirically by a lognormal density. The null hypothesis that per...

Between 1990 and 2001 the Argentine peso appreciated by 80 percent in real terms, and its overvaluation has been singled out as one of the main suspects in the debate on the causes of the Argentina collapse of late 2001. This paper assesses the degree of real misalignment in Argentina over the...

Recent theoretical literature has suggested a variety of mechanisms through which poverty may deter growth and become self-perpetuating. A few papers have searched for empirical regularities consistent with those mechanisms - such as aggregate non-convexities and convergence clubs. However, a...

This paper surveys the academic and policy debate on the roots of global imbalances, their role in the inception of the global crisis, and their prospects in its aftermath. The conventional view holds that global imbalances result primarily from unsustainably high demand for goods in the United...

This book presents the results of about three years of work finished in early 1992 in the area of private investment and macroeconomic adjustment. Its purpose is to explore the macroeconomic determinants of investment and the causes and cures for the gap between maroeconomic adjustment and...

Solvency is an intertemporal concept, relating to the present value of revenues and expenditures, and encompassing both assets and liabilities. But the standard practice among policy makers, financial market participants and international financial institutions is to assess the strength of the...

Reforms to the Mexican Social Security System in 1997 have risen acquisitions of houses using loans granted by Infonavit. The objective of this paper is to determine how attributes of houses with possibilities of being financed by Infonavit are valued. This paper uses the hedonic price...

This paper analyzes common economic patterns across countries and economic sectors in Latin America, East Asia and Europe for the period 1970-94. This is done by means of an error-components model that decomposes real value-added growth in each country into common international effects,...