Volume 4, Issue 1

This paper employs stochastic simulations of a small structural rational expectations model to investigate the consequences of the zero bound on nominal interest rates. We find that if the economy is subject to stochastic shocks similar in magnitude to those experienced in the United States over the 1980s and 1990s, the consequences of the zero bound are negligible for target inflation rates as low as 2 percent. However, the effects of the constraint are non-linear with respect to the inflation target and produce a quantitatively significant deterioration of the performance of the economy with targets between 0 and 1 percent. The variability of output increases significantly and that of inflation also rises somewhat. Also, we show that the asymmetry of the policy ineffectiveness induced by the zero bound generates a non-vertical long-run Phillips curve. Average output falls increasingly short of potential with lower inflation targets.

Many existing studies have found a correlation between inflation and price dispersion in goods markets. In this paper, we document that a similar correlation can be found in equity markets. We estimate the correlation between overall price changes and dispersion in the NYSE and in the NASDAQ. Using quarterly data from 1975 to 1999, we compare the stock market correlations with those of goods markets. We find striking correlations in both sets of markets. The most prominent explanations of the goods market correlation (such as menu costs) cannot plausibly apply to equity markets. Thus, our findings indicate that the correlation appears to be more widespread than can be accounted for by the usual explanations.

The Soviet Union was competing head to head with market economies in the generation of new technologies, not only in traditional industries such as steelmaking, electricity, and machineries, but also in high tech-areas such as synthetic materials and microelectronics. Yet its productivity performance was significantly worse than that of both developing and industrial countries. R&D-based growth models cannot explain this fact, as the Soviet effort in research and education was comparable to that of most advanced countries. I claim that a technology adoption model helps us understand better the Soviet experience. I hypothesize that the Soviet managerial compensation system generated an incentive for the manager to perform only a modest retooling activity out of fear of breaking the production norm that the planner imposed upon the firm.

Interest-rate smoothing is traditionally attributed to the gradual adjustment of monetary policy to shocks. Rudebusch (2002) argues that smoothing can also arise spuriously if an autocorrelated variable is incorrectly excluded from the estimated reaction function. This paper presents a model which discriminates between these two explanations using U.S. data. We find that both seem to matter, but that policy inertia appears to be less important than suggested by the existing literature. Further, the excluded variable is likely to reflect financial market conditions.

I present new estimates of the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor using data from the private sector of the U.S. economy for the period 1948-1998. I first adopt Berndt's (1976) specification, which assumes that technological change is Hicks neutral. Consistently with his results, I estimate elasticities of substitution that are not significantly different from one. I next show, however, that restricting the analysis to Hicks-neutral technological change necessarily biases the estimates of the elasticity towards one. When I modify the econometric specification to allow for biased technical change, I obtain significantly lower estimates of the elasticity of substitution. I conclude that the U.S. economy is not well described by a Cobb-Douglas aggregate production function. I present estimates based on both classical regression analysis and time series analysis. In the process, I deal with issues related to the nonsphericality of the disturbances, the endogeneity of the regressors, and the nonstationarity of the series involved in the estimation.

Labor productivity comoves strongly with output, leads output and employment, and is only weakly correlated with employment. Procyclical productivity is observed in virtually all countries and industries, and it is observed even in periods of fluctuations due to pure demand shocks, such as during the Great Depression and the second World War. This paper shows that a standard RBC model driven by demand shocks alone is able to explain procyclical productivity without the need to resort to technology shocks or increasing returns to scale. The key element is labor hoarding due to adjustment cost of labor. It is also shown that the observed cross-country differences in productivity cycles can be rationalized by a single parameter alone - the size of the adjustment cost of labor.

In comparison to the standard literature on inequality and growth which assumes the former to be exogenous, we formulate a model in which inequality and growth are both endogenous. Long-run distribution, at least locally, is shown to be independent of the initial distribution of factor ownership. It is shown that exogenous policy changes that are primarily targeted towards growth and foster less inequality do enhance growth. But policies that are primarily redistributive and imply a more equal distribution reduce growth. This is consistent with recent empirical work which shows that inequality and growth may be positively related.

In this paper we use a modified neoclassical business cycle model to test two competing explanations of the expansion of the 1990s. The model can have indeterminate, multiple equilibria that give rise to expectation-driven business cycles. We fit into the model series of estimated speculative and productivity shocks and compare its predictions with empirical data. Our results suggest that the speculation hypothesis has more explanatory power than the productivity hypothesis in terms of matching the data. Speculative behavior of investors, therefore, may have contributed to the investment boom, the prolonged expansion, and the subsequent recession of the period 1991-2001.

Actual and potential competition is a powerful source of discipline on the pricing behavior of firms. This paper extends the empirical literature on the pro-competitive impact of policy reforms by investigating the effects on price markups of barriers to both domestic and foreign entry in a sample of developed and developing countries. While both are found to be important determinants of industry markups, we find that country size affects the impact of tariffs and domestic entry regulation. Country size dampens the impact of the former and strengthens the effect of the latter.

This paper presents a two-country non-scale Schumpeterian endogenous growth model with interindustry North-South trade and wage rigidity in the North. Its purpose is to analyze the effects of a compression of the wage structure and an increase in unemployment benefits on Northern unskilled unemployment and growth. Both innovation and skill acquisition rates are endogenously determined. We show how the two labor market policies differ with respect to education incentives in a general equilibrium with balanced trade. We further highlight the relevance of North-South trade and incomplete Northern specialization for the labor market effects that we obtain in our model. We demonstrate that the growth effects of a compression of the Northern wage structure depend decisively on the specific formulation of rising R&D difficulty.

A number of recent papers have hypothesized that the Federal Reserve possesses information about the course of inflation and output that is unknown to the private sector, and that policy actions by the Federal Reserve convey some of this superior information. We conduct two tests of this hypothesis: 1) could monetary policy surprises be used to improve the private sector's ex ante forecasts of subsequent macroeconomic statistical releases, and 2) does the private sector revise its forecasts of macroeconomic statistical releases in response to these monetary policy surprises? We find little evidence that Federal Reserve policy surprises convey superior information about the state of the economy: they could not systematically be used to improve forecasts of statistical releases and forecasts are not systematically revised in response to policy surprises. One possible exception to this pattern is Industrial Production, a statistic that the Federal Reserve produces.

We present a simple multiple equilibria model that incorporates the functioning of crony capitalism. We find that a government which is keen to support the interests of the élite is ready to stand the risk of a bank run since this is part of an equilibrium where investments are heavily subsidized, which favors the élite. However, we find that the liaison between the government and the business community is not per se sufficient to induce vulnerability of financial institutions to panic: the willingness to favor the élite also provides an incentive to rescue the banking system in the event of a run. This stabilizing effect dominates when the élite is relatively large. We also study how a policy of banks recapitalization may contribute to the stability of the banking institution. In fact, such a policy can make credible an ex post recovery of the financial system, thus preventing the panic from generating a self-fulfilling bank crisis.

This paper fills an important gap in the literature on determinacy and existence of sunspot equilibria in stochastic linear self-referential models. The results in this paper demonstrate that heterogeneity in expectations may alter a model's regions of determinacy. We show how to associate with a heterogeneous expectations model (HE-model) a rational expectations model (ARE-model), the solutions to which are the equilibria of the HE-model. This association recasts the analysis of determinacy in the HE-model to analysis of determinacy in the ARE-model. We proceed to study a forward looking model and find that the stability properties of rational expectations models may not be robust. In particular, we present new results showing that in some models even a very small fraction of non-rational agents may preclude rational agents from coordinating on sunspots. Also, we present parameterizations of the model in which sunspots exist in the heterogeneous model when they do not exist in the rational expectations version of the model.

In this paper, we paint a statistical portrait of the determination of external debt for a set of low- and middle-income countries. The goal is to facilitate thinking about the role played by international capital flows in the development process. Empirically, we find that external debt is strongly increasing in the level of initial output. This remains true even when we control for variation in productivity and creditworthiness. More open economies also are found to have higher debt levels.

The conduct of monetary policy during the 1970s was greatly complicated by systematic real-time misperceptions of the state of economic activity as measured by the output gap. Employing real-time data and using the Taylor rule as an analytical framework, I explore the implications of utilizing alternative observable proxies for the unobservable output gap. I compare the counterfactual paths for the federal funds rate generated under each proxy with the actual path of the federal funds rate and a benchmark ( "ideal" ) path implied by a full information Taylor rule. Results suggest that these real-time proxies would have resulted in better policy outcomes than actually occurred. Indeed, the federal funds rate path that comes closest to the ideal path occurs when the estimate of the output gap is taken to be zero (its steady-state value) at every point in time. This is equivalent to ignoring output gap information in monetary policy decisions.

We compare the empirical performance of a capital certain monetary services index and an index that is extended to contain assets with substantial interest rate risk, such as unit trusts, within a cointegration money demand framework for the UK. Technological changes and innovations have increased the liquidity of risky assets and recent developments in monetary aggregation theory have made it possible to account for interest rate risk in combination with risk aversion in the construction of monetary services indices. Coefficient estimates for all systems are consistent with theory and remarkably stable. No apparent gains are noted, however, by the inclusion of 'risky' assets.

This paper analyzes the relationship between stock prices, house prices and consumption using data for 16 OECD countries. The panel data analysis suggests that the long-run responsiveness of consumption to permanent changes in stock prices is higher for countries with a market-based financial system than for countries with a bank-based financial system. Splitting the sample into the 1980s and 1990s further shows an increased sensitivity in the 1990's of consumption to permanent changes in stock prices for both countries with bank-based financial systems as well as countries with market-based financial systems. The relationship between changes in consumption and changes in house prices is positive for the second sample period across all specifications and financial systems.

We use a matching framework to explore the hypothesis that firing costs are a decreasing function of labor market tightness. Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in employment protection legislation (EPL) cause differences in labor market performance. Our hypothesis suggests a reverse causality nexus: it is labor market tightness which causes labor market rigidities. The endogeneity of firing costs produces a positive externality. We show that if this externality offsets the standard search externality, the model generates multiple equilibria. which reflect a trade off between wage moderation and the strictness of EPL. We demonstrate that the equilibria are not Pareto ranked. The analysis of local stability shows that, when firing costs externality offsets the search cost externality, the equilibrium is a stable node; vice versa, the equilibrium is an unstable saddle point. Finally, we investigate the question of social efficiency, obtaining a generalization of the Hosios (1990) condition.

In this paper we provide a simple locally interactive dynamic model of technology choice and output production. We assume a Cobb-Douglas type production function for two available technologies. The returns to technology 0 are not affected by local spillovers. Technology 1 is more costly, as there is an overhead cost, but it has a higher marginal productivity with respect to net capital. The superiority of technology 1 positively and monotonically depends on the fraction of neighbours using it. We study the aggregate process of technology choices in a model with countably many firms and repeated choices. The model explains: (i) persistent aggregate fluctuations in the presence of only idiosyncratic shocks, (ii) cross sectional heterogeneity along the dynamics and (iii) the possibility of multiple equilibria. The main contribution of the paper over the existing literature is that the model explains the endogeneous formation of large areas, homogeneous in terms of technology choice and output level, that look stationary along the dynamics.

Maybe a lot. The ratio of the minimum wage to the average wage enters a Phillips-curve equation with a coefficient that is highly significant, stable, and robust. One interpretation of these results is that the relative level of the minimum wage affects the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment or NAIRU. My estimates are consistent with the reduction in the relative level of the minimum wage since 1980 lowering the U.S. NAIRU about 1½ percentage points, while raising the NAIRU in continental Europe. However, other interpretations are also possible.

Conventional endogenous growth theory relies on the assumption of constant returns to "broad capital". As Solow pointed out, the strength of this assumption is revealed by recognizing that even the slightest touch of increasing returns creates explosive growth: infinite output in finite time! But Solow's observation ignored natural resources. What happens if non-renewable resources enter the "growth engine"? In this case (strictly) endogenous growth requires the technology to be such that there is no upper bound on the sustainable per capita growth rate. This corroborates Solow's skepticism.

This paper extends a model of endogenous growth through the introduction of a component of knowledge that makes new technologies more productive than older vintages. Creative destruction or obsolescence of technologies underlies the growth process. In this setup, the growth effects of various policies are analyzed. These policies include selective subsidies to firms that produce final output, a general lump-sum tax on final-output firms, and openness to trade with a less developed country. The results show the existence of growth effects that have not been studied in the previous literature.

The present paper explores the fiscal policy implications of intergenerational habit formation in a Blanchard overlapping generations small open economy model. Three main conclusions emerge. (1) When individuals are finitely lived and have habits which they pass on to their descendants, the dynamic response of a small open economy to shocks exhibits sluggishness in consumption in the short run and may display damped cycles in the long run. (2) With habits, optimal fiscal policy takes the form of a social insurance scheme, allowing present and unborn cohorts to share in the consequences of macroeconomic shocks. In contrast, in an economy devoid of habits, the optimal fiscal response to a permanent shock is a one time abrupt adjustment, whereby the present generations bear the entire burden of the shock. (3) If habits exist but policy is conducted as though habits did not exist, the welfare losses for society can be substantial.

In this paper, we investigate the output composition of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Japan. The predominant channel through which monetary policy affects output in Japan is usually thought to be the investment channel, namely the process whereby a change in the interest rate alters the cost of capital and therefore investment. In the United States, however, the consumption channel, which works through intertemporal substitution, is commonly considered the more significant of the two. The aim of this paper is twofold: 1) based on analysis using VAR models to understand which of the two channels, the consumption channel or the investment channel, plays the more important role in the transmission of the Japanese monetary policy; and 2) to contribute to the research on what Angeloni, Kashyap, Mojon and Terlizzese (2003) term the "Output Composition Puzzle," referring to the fact that whereas in the United States the predominant driver of output changes is the consumption channel, in the Euro area it is the investment channel. Results obtained from the Japanese models imply that the investment channel is more important.

Italy makes for an interesting case-study of the impact of socio-cultural variables on economic performance: under a common institutional framework differences in socio-cultural attitudes across Italian provinces correspond to large differences in their economic success. We analyze the effects of social variables on long-run provincial economic performance during Italy's era of economic take-off (1951-1991). Since socio-cultural traits in Italy are deeply rooted in local history and traditions, we argue that their persistence produces an (at least partly) exogenous determinant of economic prosperity. While we find rather weak evidence that civic involvement (Social Capital as defined in Putnam, 1993) fosters economic success, we do find strong evidence that the presence of organized crime (proxied by murder rates at the beginning of the period) is associated with low economic development, even after controlling for other economic and geographic factors.

This paper investigates the determinants of the ability of the yield spread to predict output fluctuations conditional on the short rate. In the model of the paper, this predictive power is contingent on the monetary authority's reaction function. In particular, expectations of monetary policy actions are crucial for the spread to predict output. Furthermore, numerical experiments suggest that the post-1979 decrease in the yield spread's predictive power is due to a shift in the monetary policy reaction function at that time.

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between economic growth and fertility as a developed economy moves through two distinct phases: women at home and raising children full time; women entering the work force and raising children part time. Women's relative wages rise with economic growth, as per Galor and Weil (1996). Higher wages make children more affordable. On the other hand, children are more costly when maternal time, used in child rearing, could be supplied to the labor market. I extend Galor and Weil (1996) by introducing goods and services as a child rearing input. A Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function for child rearing allows for varying degrees of substitutability between goods and time. The existence of an alternative input to maternal time generates a baby boom-bust cycle: fertility rises in the first phase and falls in the second. Whilst fertility declines unambiguously at the beginning of the second phase, as women enter the labor force, it may bounce-back before reaching a steady state as income effects start to dominate.

In this note, we extend Xie (JET, 1994) to solve analytically the Lucas model with a weak externality in a specific parametric case. In particular, we characterize the shape of imbalance effects in this model. Our results are mostly consistent with the findings of the related computational literature. Among other analytical findings, we prove that, while U-shaped imbalance effects are not apparent in the Lucas model for the growth rate of output per capita, the level of such a variable may exhibit this shape.

In a seminal contribution Abel, Mankiw, Summers, and Zeckhauser (1989) show that from an aggregate dynamic perspective the US economy is Pareto efficient. We argue that, when applying their test, they implicitly make strong assumptions about the economy's future behavior. We show how time series evidence may easily lead to wrong conclusions about the welfare properties of real world economies.We present a test criterion based on Zilcha (1991) and robust evidence that the US economy does not overaccumulate capital. Our contribution highlights that the distinction between efficient capital accumulation and Pareto efficiency is empirically relevant. The latter efficiency benchmark - encompassing also risk sharing issues - cannot be rigorously tested based on available approaches in the literature.

The empirical test of the New Keynesian Phillips curve is often implemented by estimating a hybrid specification that includes both lagged and future inflation and then by examining whether the estimated coefficient on future inflation is significantly larger than the one on lagged inflation. This article presents evidence that supply shocks matter. Results in previous research – the output gap is irrelevant and expected future inflation is the major determinant of inflation – arise if the hybrid specification is estimated omitting supply shocks and/or lagged inflation. With supply shocks included, the output gap is significant and the estimated coefficient on lagged inflation is significantly larger than the one on future inflation. The estimated coefficient on lagged inflation is unity if in the hybrid specification inflation responds also to a change in the output gap. Together these results suggest that expected future inflation is not the major determinant of current inflation.

We present an economy composed of many sectors. In each sector, a simple dynamic stochastic game is played between a wage-setting union and many competitive firms that choose employment. Firms are subject to linear workforce adjustment costs whilst the union, along with employment and wages, is also concerned with limiting the number of insiders fired during business downturns.We show that the interaction between mandated firing costs and the protection of insiders operated by the union through the wage policy reduces the effect of the former on the job turnover rate. In particular, the negative relationship between turnover and firing costs may be so weak that it could easily escape empirical detection. Thus, the paper offers a potential explanation for the surprisingly similar patterns of aggregate job turnover exhibited by OECD countries despite large differences in the stringency of legislated employment protection.