This paper deals with a polemic and relevant aspect of the economic history of Porfirian Mexico: the integration of agricultural domestic markets. Since corn was the staple product of the commercial agricultural sector and also the main subsistence crop, it is the protagonist of this story....

In this paper we analyze the role of trade shocks in shaping aggregate fluctuations in Venezuela from 1950 to 1995. To this end a stochastic general equilibrium model of a small open economy whose main productive activity rests in the exports of a single basic product is specified. Shocks to the...

This paper presents the state of art in optimal fiscal policy, focusing on the more promising research lines in this topic. In particular, we show the main results on how the government must implement optimal fiscal policy in different frameworks: from static to dynamic stochastic settings and,...

This paper tackles the fundamental issue in public finance of wether taxing or subsidizing factor rents. In a one sector endogenous growth model with private and public capital, similar to that in Barro (1990),we find that raising taxes on factors’ income as part of an optimal fiscal policy is...

Large and very large portfolios of financial assets are routine for many individuals and organizations. The two most widely used models of conditional covariances and correlations are BEKK and DCC. BEKK suffers from the archetypal "curse of dimensionality" whereas DCC does not. This is a...

This paper designs a general equilibrium model with a public sector which builds up public infrastructure. Public consumption expenditure is necessary for an efficient use of public physical capital, so there exists a productive effect for such type of public spending. The normative results...

Under the Basel II Accord, banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) have to communicate their daily risk estimates to the monetary authorities at the beginning of the trading day, using a variety of Value-at-Risk (VaR) models to measure risk. Sometimes the risk estimates...

This paper discusses wether by implementing an environmental tax reform, a government may achieve a double dividend. We consider the simplest endogenous growth model (AK model) and include a negative environmental externality in the utility function. Pollution flow can be reduced by means of...

The first two principal components in the vector of term structure slopes from IRS markets in eight major currencies can be approximately identified as the slopes for the US dollar and Deutsche mark. Each of the eight slopes considered is cointegrated with these two factors. The implied Error...

Using estimated principal components as factors, three-factors models are shown to produce forecasts comparable to those of autoregressive models for 2 to 10 year zaero coupon interest rates IRS markets both, for short- and medium- term forecasting horizons. Evidence is provided for the Deutsche...