Working Paper
Effective labor regulation and microeconomic flexibility
Engel, Eduardo M. R. A.; Cowan, Kevin; Caballero, Ricardo J.; Micco, Alejandro (2004)
Microeconomic flexibility, by facilitating the process of creative destruction, is at the core of economic growth in modern market economies. The main reason why this process is not infinitely fast is the presence of adjustment costs, some of them technological, others institutional. Chief among the latter is labor market regulation. While few economists would object to such a view, its empirical support is rather weak. In this paper we revisit this hypothesis and find strong evidence for it. We use a new sectoral panel for 60 countries and a methodology suitable for such a panel. We find ...
Working Papers , Paper 04-6

Conference Paper
Exchange rate policies and capital account management: Chile in the 1990s
De Gregorio, Jose; Cowan, Kevin (1996)
Proceedings

Working Paper
Corporate dollar debt and depreciations: much ado about nothing?
Cowan, Kevin; Bleakley, Hoyt (2002)
Much has been written recently about the problems for emerging markets that might result from a mismatch between foreign-currency denominated liabilities and assets (or income flows) denominated in local currency. In particular, several models, developed in the aftermath of financial crises of the late 1990s, suggest that the expansion in the "peso" value of "dollar" liabilities resulting from a devaluation could, via a net-worth effect, offset the expansionary competitiveness effect. Assessing which effect dominates, however, is ultimately an empirical matter. In this vein, we construct ...
Working Papers , Paper 02-5

Conference Paper
Maturity mismatch and financial crises: evidence from emerging market corporations
Bleakley, Hoyt; Cowan, Kevin (2005)
Substantial attention has been paid in recent years to the risk of maturity mismatch in emerging markets. Although this risk is microeconomic in nature, the evidence advanced thus far has taken the form of macro correlations. We evaluate this mechanism empirically at the micro level by using a database of over 3000 publicly traded firms from fifteen emerging markets. We measure the risk of short-term exposure by estimating, at the firm level, the effect on investment of the interaction of short-term exposure and aggregate capital flows. This effect is (statistically) zero, contrary to the ...
Proceedings