Existing models of contagious currency crises are summarized and surveyed, and it is argued that more weight should be put on political factors. Towards this end, the concept of political contagion introduced, whereby contagion in speculative attacks across currencies arises solely because of...

The standard model of signaling used in open economy macroeconomics concentrates on building a reputation when a policymaker's `type' is unknown. Observing tough policy leads market participants to raise the probability that a policymaker is tough, and therefore to expect tough policy in the...

A political-economic model of the composition of government debt, that is, whether it is issued to domestic or foreign holders, is presented. The key determinant will be the political constraints on repudiation of foreign and domestic debt, which will determine the nature of the domestic...

Originally, economics was called political economy, and those studying it readily accepted that economic decisions are made in a political world. But economics eventually separated itself from politics to pursue rigorous methods of analyzing individual behavior and markets. Recently, an...

We develop a framework to study the effects of policies of uncertain duration onconsumption dynamics under both complete and incomplete markets. We focus on the dynamicimplications of market incompleteness, specifically on the lack of state-contingent bonds. Twopolicies are considered: pure...

This work suggests a connection between the lack of restructuring of the privatized firms in transition and the high level of regulatory barriers faced by the private sector. In this work I suggest that the potential entry of the newly created private firms significantly affects the incentives...