Abstract The permanent income/transitory income distinction from consumption functions can be applied to cost functions. Transitory deviations of actual output from potential output, i.e., variations in capacity utilization, are relevant to the U-shaped average cost pattern found in econometric studies. Data from retail banks in Argentina are used to illustrate this issue, with the number of branches as a proxy for potential output, and product per branch as a proxy for the utilization level.

It is usually asserted that political instability significantly lowers private investment, as well as economic growth, since it has adverse influence on property rights, and by that on investment and growth (i.e., Robert Barro, 1991; Ross Levine & David Renelt, 1992; Paolo Mauro, 1994; Edgardo Zablotsky, 1994).

Este trabajo recopila una serie de documentos escritos mayoritariamente durante la última década. El tema común son los movimientos de capitales y sus efectos sobre variables cruciales de la economía, tales como la inflación, el crecimiento, el tipo real de cambio y el equilibrio comercial.

Desde épocas bastante primitivas de la banca, el retiro generalizado de depósitos fue una ocupación permanente. El concepto de "riesgo sistémico" es el que mejor representa esta ocupación, y su persistencia a través de los siglos como uno de los principales problemas de la banca radica en la interpretación de que es un riesgo no diversificable.

A recurrent feature of economies that alternate between periods of high and low inflation is that they also alternate between periods of high and low real exchange rates, as the experience of Argentina shows.

As the recent Mexican crisis vividly illustrates, Latin American countries often go through boom-bust cycles caused by both domestic policies and external shocks. Such cycles are typically magnified by weak bank-ing systems which intermediate large capital inflows. This paper develops a simple optimizing model to analyze how the banking sector affects the propagation of shocks. In particular, we show how the world business cycle and shocks to the banking system affect output and employment through fluctuations in bank credit.

The model of labor relations that prevailed in the Western world after World War II was formally proposed in 1958 by J. Dunlop.¹ In 1960, a synthesis of the prevailing thought on the subject was presented in a work by Kerr, Dunlop, Harbison, and Myers. This model was based primarily on the experience of the United States, which was presented at the time as the "best practice" to be emulated in other countries. It was closely associated with the modes of mass production structured according to the Fordist-Taylorist principles analyzed in previous works.

The term or idea of ​​structure can be traced over a long series of meanings, although rather imprecise, even back to the Greek classics. The vagueness could be readily associated with the fact that this term, this idea, has appeared at very diverse points in the cultural spectrum. From linguistics to mathematics, from biology to history, everyone at one time or another made some use of the idea of ​​structure. However, only during the 19th century did very evident traces appear of the use of the concept in the field of social sciences.