El Mercado de la Merced, the largest public market in Mexico City.
In 2010, Tim Kehoe and Juan Pablo Nicolini started working on a project based on the hypothesis that the inability, or unwillingness, of governments to limit their spending to their own ability to raise tax revenues has been the driving force behind the economic crises that have plagued Latin America since the 1970s. Since 2013, funding has been provided by the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago, where Fernando Alvarez, Lars Hansen, and Thomas Sargent have had major roles in guiding the project. The University of Minnesota Press has published a physical book, A Monetary and Fiscal History of Latin America, 1960–2017, edited by Kehoe and Nicolini. An online version is available with data appendices for doing the Kehoe-Nicolini-Sargent government
budget accounting. The book has individual chapters that use a common conceptual framework to study the modern economic histories of eleven major Latin American countries written by local experts: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In addition, there is forward written by François Velde, an introduction written by Alvarez, Hansen, and Sargent, a presentation of the budget accounting framework used in every country chapter by Kehoe, Nicolini, and Sargent, and a final chapter on the lessons learned from studying the economic histories of the set of countries side by side by Carlos Esquivel, Kehoe, and Nicolini. The BFI also has a website for the project that contains drafts of all of the chapters.
Tim Kehoe received his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Providence College in 1975 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1979. He has taught at Wesleyan University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Cambridge in England. Since 1987 Tim has been a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota where he is currently a Distinguished McKnight University Professor. He is also an adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His research and teaching focus on the theory and application of general equilibrium models. Tim has advised the Spanish government on the impact of joining the European Community in 1986, the Mexican government on the impact of joining NAFTA in 1994, and the Panamanian government on the impact of unilateral foreign trade and investment reforms in 1998. He is married to Jean O'Brien-Kehoe, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota.
Placements of students on the 2023–2024 job market
Braulio Britos Hernandez (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota), PricewaterhouseCoopers
Ricardo Alves Monteiro (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota), International Monetary Fund
Jiaxi Tan (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota), Analysis Group
Simeng Zeng (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota), International Monetary Fund
Entian Zhang (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota), World Bank