We propose a tractable variant of the open economy neoclassical growth model that emphasizes political economy and contracting frictions. The political economy frictions involve a preference for immediate spending, while the contracting friction is a lack of commitment regarding foreign debt and expropriation. We show that the political economy frictions slow an economy's convergence to the steady state due to the endogenous evolution of capital taxation. The model rationalizes why openness has different implications for growth depending on the political environment, why institutions such as the treatment of capital income evolve over time, why governments in countries that grow rapidly accumulate net foreign assets rather than liabilities, and why foreign aid may not affect growth.

In placing capital market imperfections at the center of emerging market crises, the theoretical literature has associated a liquidity crisis with low foreign investment and the exit of investors from the crisis economy. However, a liquidity crisis is equally consistent with an inflow of foreign capital in the form of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). To support this hypothesis, we use a firm-level data set to show that foreign acquisitions increased by 91% in East Asia between 1996 and 1998, while intranational merger activity declined. Firm liquidity plays a significant and sizable role in explaining both the increase in foreign acquisitions and the decline in the price of acquisitions during the crisis. This contrasts with the role of liquidity in noncrisis years and in noncrisis economies in the region. This effect is also most prominent in the tradable sector. Quantitatively, the observed decline in liquidity can explain 25% of the increase in foreign acquisition activity in the tradable sectors. The nature of M&A activity supports liquidity-based explanations of the East Asian crisis and provides an explanation for the puzzling stability of FDI inflows during the crises.

We establish that creditor beliefs regarding future borrowing can be self-fulfilling, leading to multiple equilibria with markedly different debt accumulation patterns. We characterize such indeterminacy in the Eaton-Gersovitz sovereign debt model augmented with long maturity bonds. Two necessary conditions for the multiplicity are (i) the government is more impatient than foreign creditors, and (ii) there are deadweight losses from default. The multiplicity is dynamic and stems from the self-fulfilling beliefs of how future creditors will price bonds; long maturity bonds are therefore a crucial component of the multiplicity. We introduce a third party with deep pockets to discuss the policy implications of this source of multiplicity and identify the potentially perverse consequences of traditional “lender of last resort” policies.

We revisit to what extent the increase in income inequality since 1980 was mirrored by consumption inequality. We do so by constructing an alternative measure of consumption expenditure using a demand system to correct for systematic measurement error in the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Our estimation exploits the relative expenditure of high- and low-income households on luxuries versus necessities. This double differencing corrects for measurement error that can vary over time by good and income. We find consumption inequality tracked income inequality much more closely than estimated by direct responses on expenditures.

Many households hold little wealth. In standard precautionary savings models, these households should not only display higher marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) but also higher future consumption growth. In contrast, we see from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that such “hand-to-mouth” households do not display higher growth in spending. They also exhibit greater volatility of spending and adjust their spending to a greater extent through the number of categories consumed. Consistent with a role for preference heterogeneity, the panel data show that it is persistent differences across households, not current assets, that predict low consumption growth and other spending differences for the hand-to-mouth households. To identify the extent of preference heterogeneity, we consider the model of Kaplan and Violante with both liquid and illiquid assets, but allow heterogeneity in preferences. To match the data, many poor hand-to-mouth must be relatively impatient and have a high inter-temporal elasticity of substitution. The model shows that preferences predominantly explain the higher MPCs for low-asset households. Preference heterogeneity notably increases the spending impact of fiscal transfers, but only if targeted, while reducing that from interest rate cuts.

We characterize optimal taxation of foreign capital and optimal sovereign debt policy in a small open economy where the government cannot commit to policy and seeks to insure a risk averse domestic constituency. The expected tax on capital is shown to vary with the state of the economy, generating cyclicality in investment and debt in an environment where the first best capital stock is a constant. The government's lack of commitment induces a negative correlation between investment and the stock of government debt, a "debt overhang'' effect. If the government discounts the future at a rate higher than the market, then capital oscillates indefinitely at a level strictly below the first best. Debt relief is never Pareto improving and cannot affect the long-run level of investment. Further, restricting the government to a balanced budget can eliminate the cyclical distortion of investment.

Emerging market business cycles exhibit strongly countercyclical current accounts, consumption volatility that exceeds income volatility, and “sudden stops†in capital inflows. These features contrast with developed small open economies. Nevertheless, we show that a standard model characterizes both types of markets. Motivated by the frequent policy regime switches observed in emerging markets, our premise is that these economies are subject to substantial volatility in trend growth. Our methodology exploits the information in consumption and net exports to identify the persistence of productivity. We find that shocks to trend growth—rather than transitory fluctuations around a stable trend—are the primary source of fluctuations in emerging markets. The key features of emerging market business cycles are then shown to be consistent with this underlying income process in an otherwise standard equilibrium model.

We provide conditions for the feasibility of robust Pareto-improving (RPI) policies when markets are incomplete and the interest rate is below the growth rate. We allow for arbitrary heterogeneity in preferences and income risk and a wedge between the return to capital and bonds. An RPI improves risk sharing and can induce a more efficient level of capital. Elasticities of aggregate savings to changes in interest rates are the crucial ingredients to the feasibility of RPIs. Government debt may complement rather than substitute for capital in an RPI. Our analysis emphasizes the welfare-improving qualities of government bonds versus explicit redistribution.

Many emerging market economies oscillate between periods of high and low growth (see Aguiar and Gopinath, 2007). These changes in growth regimes generate business cycles that are markedly different from the ones observed in developed countries: consumption and investment are volatile relative to output, and net exports are strongly counter-cyclical. This volatility is often accompanied by sharp changes in the policy environment as well. For example, figure 1 shows the relationship between two measures of expropriation and political risk and real GDP for Argentina between 1984 and 2007. For easy comparison to the GDP series, the risk factors are inverted so that an increase in the index corresponds to a decrease in risk, and all series are normalized to 100 in 1984.1 The risk factor series are highly correlated with output.2 When GDP is higher than average, the institutions and government policies in Argentina foster growth, as measured by increased political stability, enhanced respect for property rights, and stronger contract enforcement. In Aguiar et al. (forthcoming), we develop a framework to understand these policy reversals and the associated economic volatility. In particular, we explore the joint dynamics of sovereign debt, investment, and expropriation risk in a small open economy model. Our departing point from previous work was the introduction of two political economy frictions. ∗Prepared for the January 2009 AEA Annual Meeting. We thank Thomas Sampson for excellent research assistance. 1The measures of risk are taken from Political Risk Services (PRS). The Expropriation Risk Index is a scaled version of the PRS Investment Profile series, which summarizes the government’s attitude toward inward investment based on four risk factors: expropriation, taxation, repatriation, and labor costs. The Political Risk index assigns risk points to a group of factors, of which, the Investment Profile variable is one. Real GDP is from the World Development Indicators. 2The correlation between the inverse measure of expropriation risk and GDP is 0.68, and the political risk and GDP is 0.71.

We study the interactions between sovereign debt default and maturity choice in a setting with limited commitment for repayment as well as future debt issuances. Our main finding is that, under a wide range of conditions, the sovereign should, as long as default is not preferable, remain passive in long‐term bond markets, making payments and retiring long‐term bonds as they mature but never actively issuing or buying back such bonds. The only active debt‐management margin is the short‐term bond market. We show that any attempt to manipulate the existing maturity profile of outstanding long‐term bonds generates losses, as bond prices move against the sovereign. Our results hold regardless of the shape of the yield curve. The yield curve captures the average costs of financing at different maturities but is misleading regarding the marginal costs.