This paper models the housing sector, mortgages and endogenous default in a DSGE setting with nominal and real rigidities. We use data for the period 1981-2006 to estimate our model using Bayesian techniques. We analyze how an increase in risk in the mortgage market raises the default rate and...

Examines the evolution of the cyclicality of real wages and employment in four Latin American economies: Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, during the period 1980-2010. Wages are highly pro-cyclical during the 1980s and early 1990s, a period characterized by high inflation. As inflation...

This paper illustrates the importance of consistency between the empirical measurement and the concept of variables in macroeconomic models. Since standard New Keynesian models do not account for demographic trends and sectoral shifts, I propose adjusting hours per capita used to estimate such...

This paper builds an unobserved components model that combines a multivariate filter approach with a Cobb-Douglas production function. This combination allows potential output estimates to incorporate more economic structure than the traditional production function approach, while retaining the...