Volume 6, Issue 1

Inflation-targeting central banks have only imperfect knowledge about the effect of policy decisions on inflation. An important source of uncertainty is the relationship between inflation and unemployment. This paper studies the optimal monetary policy in the presence of uncertainty about the natural unemployment rate, the short-run inflation-unemployment tradeoff and the degree of inflation persistence in a simple macroeconomic model that incorporates rational learning by the central bank as well as market participants. Two conflicting motives drive the optimal policy. In the static version of the model, uncertainty provides a motive for the policymaker to move more cautiously than she would if she knew the true parameters. In the dynamic version, uncertainty also motivates an element of experimentation in policy. The optimal policy, which balances the cautionary and activist motives, is computed using empirical estimates of Phillips curve uncertainty. Experimentation matters quantitatively for moderate to high degrees of uncertainty. Nevertheless, gradual inflation stabilization typically remains optimal, that is, the optimal policy response to inflation is less aggressive than a policy that disregards parameter uncertainty. Exceptions occur when uncertainty is very high and inflation close to target.

This paper evaluates quantitatively the impact of the observed demographic transition on aggregate variables (factor prices, saving rate, output growth), and on inter-generational welfare in developing economies. It does so by developing a large-scale two-region equilibrium overlapping generations model calibrated to the North (more developed countries) and the South (less developed countries). The paper highlights that the effects of the demographic trends for less developed regions may depend on the degree of international capital mobility and on the extent to which the large Pay-As-You-Go systems in place in the more developed world will be reformed.

We study the effects of inflation in a competitive search model where each buyer's utility is private information, and money is essential. The equilibrium is efficient at the Friedman rule, but inflation creates an inefficiency in the terms of trade. Buyers experience a preference shock after they are matched with a seller, and thus they have a precautionary motive for holding money. Sellers, who compete to attract buyers, post non-linear price schedules. As inflation rises, sellers post relatively flat price schedules, which reduce the need for precautionary balances. These price schedules induce buyers with a low desire to consume to purchase inefficiently high quantities because of the low marginal cost of purchasing goods. In contrast, buyers with a high desire to consume purchase inefficiently low quantities as they face binding liquidity constraints. The model fits historical US data on velocity and interest rates.

This paper considers whether the sticky information model of Mankiw and Reis (2002) can robustly deliver inflation inertia. I find that four features of the model play a key role in determining inflation inertia: the frequency of information updating, the degree of real rigidities, the nature and persistence of monetary policy, and the presence or not of information stickiness elsewhere in the economy. Real rigidities serve to dampen firms’ desired price changes and are a critical element in delivering inflation inertia. The type of monetary policy, money-growth vs. interest rate rules, also matters, with Taylor rules making inflation inertia less likely than under money growth rules. Adding sticky information in consumption to the model yields a more gradual adjustment of output, thereby decreasing the incentive for firms to change prices on impact and increasing the inertia of inflation. I also explore the implications of using random versus fixed durations of information rigidity and argue that with the latter, the choice of the policy rule has a smaller effect on the qualitative response of inflation. These results allow us to sort out some conflicting conclusions on inflation inertia in sticky information models and suggest that inertia is more sensitive to parameter choices than previously thought.

This paper examines a search-matching model in which match specific output follows a geometric Brownian motion. As opposed to Poisson Processes, Brownian motions generate a negative correlation between job output and the likelihood of separation. Introducing geometric Brownian motion improves the fit of the standard model with respect to the observed patterns of worker turnover and wage dispersion, without taking from its relevance at the macro level. Firstly, the proposed set-up does not require learning about match quality in order to yield a hump-shaped hazard rate of job separation. Secondly, the aggregate wage distribution is unimodal and its right tail belongs to the Pareto family, so it satisfies the "heavy-tail" property that is commonly observed in the data.

This paper derives a closed form solution for the Ramsey model with CRRA utility and Cobb-Douglas technology, for the case where capital's share is equal to the reciprocal of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. The solution sheds light on the dynamics of the model and provides an exact expression for the speed of convergence.

Since the seminal work of Blanchard and Katz, it has been widely believed that interstate migration causes state-level employment rates in the United States to revert rapidly to normal following a regional employment shock. This paper identifies two sources of bias in conventional estimates of the dynamics of regional labor markets: small sample bias stemming from the use of short time series, and measurement error in survey based series for employment status at the state level. Estimates that use more reliable series and correct for these biases suggest little or no mean reversion in state-level employment rates. Thus the perception that U.S. regional labor markets are highly flexible appears to be incorrect.

This paper presents, within a framework of the Solow model, evidence that there are significant differences in convergence patterns across subsamples. It shows that although OECD countries and the countries converging to their steady states from above follow a pattern of conditional convergence, those converging to their steady states from below do not. This result is best explained by the idea that technology diffusion has a large effect mainly on the countries converging to their steady states from below.

Many studies show that individuals do not perfectly smooth consumption at older ages. We argue that an important explanation is that health status declines with age, making consumption at older ages less desirable. We incorporate health status into a standard incomplete markets life-cycle model, by allowing the marginal utility of consumption to increase with health status. Life-cycle income, mortality risk and health status are exogenous in the model and calibrated on Swedish data. Life-cycle consumption is endogenous and matches well Swedish Consumer Expenditure Survey data; consumption expenditure increase with age until about 60 years, and then falls with about 25% to 80 years. An alternative model with mortality risk, but without health status, fails in capturing the fall in consumption with age seen in the data.

We study an optimal growth model with one-hoss-shay vintage capital, where labor resources can be allocated freely either to production, technology adoption or capital maintenance. Technological progress is partly embodied. Adoption labor increases the level of embodied technical progress. First, we are able to disentangle the amplification-propagation role of maintenance in business fluctuations: in the short run, the response of the model to transitory shocks on total factor productivity in the final good sector are definitely much sharper compared to the counterpart model without maintenance but with the same average depreciation rate. Moreover, the one-hoss shay technology is shown to reinforce this amplification-propagation mechanism. We also find that accelerations in embodied technical progress should be responded by a gradual adoption effort, and capital maintenance should be the preferred instrument in the short run.

In recent decades there has been a worldwide shift toward market-oriented economic policies, sometimes termed 'neoliberalism’. In the policy arena this trend has been most apparent in the widespread move toward privatization and deregulation. And in the academic world there has been increased respect shown to free market ideologies, even to policy views that would once have been regarded as impractical. Surprisingly, monetary policy is one area that has been relatively unaffected by the neoliberal revolution. Not only have governments retained a monopoly on fiat money, but even some free market ideologues have been skeptical of proposals for laissez-faire monetary regimes. This paper will show that market forces can greatly improve the effectiveness of monetary policy. I will argue that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) should do no more than set the goals of monetary policy. Sumner (1989, 1995) and Dowd (1994) argued that the creative use of prediction markets for goal variables might allow central banks to more accurately target variables such as inflation. I will briefly review the literature on policy futures markets, examine Bernanke and Woodford’s (1997) critique of policies that “target the forecast”, and then suggest some improvements in previous reform proposals. More importantly, I show that policy future markets can address some of the key weaknesses of orthodox macroeconomic theory and policy, particularly the lack of consensus over structural models. Under this sort of policy regime, open market operations would reflect the views of not merely 12 individuals, but rather the consensus opinion of all those who choose to engage in open market operations. Even an issue as basic as the optimal monetary instrument would no longer be determined by the monetary authority, instead, each individual participant in the policymaking process would choose their own policy indicator. I will also show that a universal FOMC can improve the effectiveness of monetary policy even if the average level of decision-making skills on the expanded FOMC is inferior to the average skill level of the current 12 members.

Inflation can “grease” the wheels of the labor market by relaxing downward wage rigidity but it can also increase uncertainty and have a negative “sand” effect. This paper studies the grease effect of inflation by looking at whether the interaction between inflation and labor market regulations affects how employment responds to changes in output. The results show that in industrial countries with highly regulated labor markets, the grease effect of inflation dominates the sand effect. In the case of developing countries, we rarely find a significant effect of inflation or labor market regulations and provide evidence indicating that this could be due to the presence of a large informal sector and limited enforcement of de jure labor market regulations.

This paper demonstrates that sectoral heterogeneity itself, without additional bells or whistles, has important, first-order implications for the transmission of aggregate shocks to aggregate variables in an otherwise standard DSGE model. The effects of sectoral heterogeneity on this transmission are decomposed into two channels: a “relative price” channel and a “relative productivity” channel. The relative price channel results from changes in the relative prices of aggregates, such as investment vs. consumption, in response to a shock. The relative productivity channel arises from changes in the distribution of inputs across sectors. We show that, for standard multi-sector models, this latter channel is second-order, but becomes first-order if we consider a nontraded input such as capital utilization or introduce a wedge that thwarts the steady-state equalization of marginal products of a traded input across sectors. For reasonable parameterizations, the relative productivity channel causes aggregate productivity to vary procyclically in response to even non-technological shocks, such as changes in government purchases.

Search-theory has become the main paradigm for the micro-foundation of money. But no comprehensive business cycle analysis has been undertaken yet with a search-based monetary model. This paper extends the model with divisible goods and divisible money of Shi (JET, 1998) to allow for capital formation, analyses the monetary propagation mechanism and contrasts the model's implications with US business cycle stylized facts. The propagation mechanism based on a feedback between increased search intensity and depleted inventories only survives in the presence of non-negligible capital adjustment costs. With intermediate adjustment costs the model is able to replicate fairly well the volatility and cross-correlation with output of key US time series, including sales and inventory investment.

We study standard monetary-policy rules with inflation-rate targets and either interest-rate or money-supply instruments using a flexible-price, perfect-foresight model. We focus mainly on interest-rate rules, but the results for money-supply rules are analogous. A locally-unique target equilibrium always exists. There are also below-target equilibria (BTE) with inflation below target and constant or asymptotically approaching or eventually reaching a below-target value. Liquidity traps are neither necessary nor sufficient for BTE. Such equilibria can also arise if monetary policy keeps the interest rate above a lower bound. We construct monetary-policy rules that preclude BTE. All are non-monotonic and discontinuous in current inflation. Each implies a difference equation in inflation. Some of these difference equations are continuous, but others are not. They are all non-monotonic and non-differentiable at a point. We argue that Japan's difficulties in the 1990s were probably the result of a stabilization problem rather than an indeterminacy problem.

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They maintained that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the business cycle. However, while Lucas stuck to this view, Prescott changed his mind at the end of the 1990s, breaking his earlier self-imposed restraint. In this paper we document this evolution of opinion and produce a first assessment of real business cycle models of the Great Depression. We claim that the fact of having constructed an equilibrium model of the Great Depression constitutes a methodological breakthrough. However, as far as substance is concerned, we argue that the contribution of real business cycle literature on the Great Depression is slim, and does not gain the upper hand over the work of economic historians.

Jovanovic and Ueda (1997) consider a principal-agent model with moral hazard and renegotiation. A noisy signal of the agent's output is observed before renegotiation takes place and actual output is revealed after renegotiation. If the agent is restricted to choose pure strategies it can be shown that the only renegotiation-proof contracts which induce optimal effort by the agent depend only on the signal and not on actual output. In this paper we show the restriction to pure strategies is crucial to the result, at least when the quality of the signal is not very good.

In the recent macro literature the effect of competition has been analyzed by comparing economies with the same market structure but different degrees of substitutability. In this note, we argue that this approach may mingle the price effect of competition with a pure allocation effect. To illustrate the limitations of using the elasticity of substitution as a measure of competition, we present an example in which changes in the elasticity alter equilibrium allocations, but changes in the degree of market power do not. We use a simple static general equilibrium model in which sectors have different productivity. Then, higher substitutability always shifts resources towards the more productive sectors. Instead, changes in the market structure (monopolistic competition versus Bertrand duopoly) do not affect the relative price of consumption goods if the markups are symmetric, implying that the induced changes in competition do not have any price effect on equilibrium allocations.

In this paper we revisit the work of Jones (1995a) which provided strong evidence against the empirical validity of AK-type models that predict increasing output growth rates as a result of permanent movements in the physical investment rate. For that purpose, we employ recently developed unit root tests with good size and power which are also able to accommodate the existence of a structural break in the data for 26 OECD countries over the period 1950-1992. Overall, the analysis of deterministic and stochastic trends in output growth and investment rates (in total physical investment, and in producer durables and total structures) do not render broad support for the empirical validity of AK models. This result appears to be confirmed by the estimation of autoregressive distributed lag growth models which consistently render insignificant long-run coefficients on the investment rates.

The literature on exchange rate regimes has recently observed that officially self-declared free floaters intervene strongly in foreign exchange markets to maintain their nominal exchange rates within some unannounced bands. In this paper, we provide an explanation of this behavior, labeled by Calvo and Reinhart as fear of floating. First, we analyze the linkages between the credibility of the exchange rate regime, the volatility of the exchange rate, and the band width of fluctuations. Second, we use the model to understand the reduction in volatility experienced by most ERM countries after their target zones widened in August 1993. Finally, we solve the model for a subgame perfect equilibrium, in which fear of floating can be viewed as the credible choice of a finite non-zero band.

Although a lot has been written on the link between debt maturity and financial crises, it remains puzzling why the private sector in emerging market economies holds such a large share of short-term debt in the presence of substantial macroeconomic risk. To understand this phenomenon, we propose a simple model in which debt maturity depends on economic uncertainty about investment returns. We show in particular that if lenders are risk averse, higher uncertainty can (i) lower the total debt level a country is able to borrow and (ii) tilt the debt profile towards short-term debt. We take these model implications to the data using a panel of 28 emerging market economies and various indicators for macroeconomic uncertainty. We find substantial empirical support for the model's predictions.

In this paper, we empirically examine the portfolio-rebalancing effects stemming from the policy of “quantitative monetary easing” recently undertaken by the Bank of Japan when the nominal short-term interest rate was virtually at zero. Portfolio-rebalancing effects resulting from the open market purchase of long-term government bonds under this policy have been statistically significant. Our results also show that the portfolio-rebalancing effects were beneficial in that they reduced risk premiums on assets with counter-cyclical returns, such as government and high-grade corporate bonds. But, they may have generated the adverse effects of increasing risk premiums on assets with pro-cyclical returns, such as equities and low-grade corporate bonds. These results are consistent with a CAPM framework in which business-cycle risk importantly affects risk premiums. Our estimates capture only some of the effects of quantitative easing and thus do not imply that the complete set of effects were adverse on net for Japan’s economy. However, our analysis counsels caution in accepting the view that, ceteris paribus, a massive large-scale purchase of long-term government bonds by a central bank provides unambiguously positive net benefits to financial markets at zero short-term interest rates.

This paper presents a new approach to assess the role of price mismeasurement in the productivity slowdown. I invert the firm’s investment decision to identify the embodied and disembodied components of productivity growth. With a Cobb-Douglas production function, output price mismeasurement only should affect the latter. Contrary to the mismeasurement hypothesis, I find that in the Post-War period, disembodied productivity grew faster in the hard-to-measure than in the non-manufacturing easy-to-measure sectors, and that disembodied productivity slowed down less in the hard-to-measure than in the easy-to-measure sectors since the 70’s. These results hold a fortiori when capital and labor are complements.

The paper argues that a Cobb-Douglas specification may be a reasonable description of the Finnish aggregate production function when a sufficiently long time period (the 20th century) is considered. It is, however, a misleading description of the production technology for the post-WWII period. Controlling for biased technical change, the elasticity of substitution is significantly below one, close to 0.5, during 1945-2003. Given that similar results have been obtained for the U.S. economy, the analysis shows that the value of the elasticity of substitution cannot be dependent on some specific structure of economic institutions but is likely to reflect more general aspects of technology and production.

Limited participation models explain a short-run liquidity effect as arising from the redistribution of income from non-participants in the bond market to participants in the bond market. However, these models also imply that the liquidity effect is smaller the larger is long-run money growth. Using cross-country data, we show that in the short run, the correlation between money growth and the nominal interest rate, and the regression coefficient of the latter regressed on the former are larger (algebraically), the larger is long-run money growth. These results are consistent with this latter implication of the limited participation models.

This paper shows that the value function describing efficient risk sharing with limited commitment is not necessarily differentiable everywhere. We link differentiability of the value function to history dependence of efficient allocations and provide sufficient conditions for both properties.

This paper introduces a signalling model of conspicuous consumption in the context of an endogenous growth model. Agents purchase luxury goods to signal their social status. 'Invidious Comparison' takes place when rich agents successfully identify themselves, whereas 'Pecuniary Emulation' takes place when some poor agents succeeded in emulating the rich. Demand for new design is created during 'Pecuniary Emulation' as rich agents seek to purchase a good of superior quality in order to distinguish themselves from the poor. The growth process is characterized by creative destruction, and the economy is shown to switch between 'Invidious Comparison' and 'Pecuniary Emulation' along the growth path.

We relate the negative correlation between income and the ratio of high to low-tech human capital and the positive correlation between income and investment on R&D, both present in developed countries, to the transition to a services economy. To this end a growth model with endogenous innovation and accumulation of high-tech and low-tech human capital is developed. We consider a negative effect of technological development on the accumulation of high-tech human capital and that services are relatively intensive in low-tech human capital. We confirm the model implications quantitatively in a calibration exercise.

This paper examines the allocation of heterogeneous workers across sectors of an economy in which workers are able to direct their search towards particular firms. We find that search frictions, in addition to causing unemployment, may result in an inefficient allocation of labor. This result arises because of the interaction between the investment decisions of firms and the search decisions of workers. Despite constant returns to scale in both the matching and production functions, this interaction can generate multiple equilibria. The existence of multiple equilibria is shown to depend crucially on the direction of comparative advantage.

We examine bank lending decisions in an economy with spillover effects in the creation of new investment opportunities and asymmetric information in credit markets. We examine price-setting equilibria with horizontally differentiated banks. If bank lending takes place under a weak corporate governance mechanism and is fraught with agency problems and ineffective bank monitoring, then an equilibrium emerges in which loan supply is strategically restricted. In this equilibrium, the loan restriction, the "under-lending" strategy, provides an advantage to one bank by increasing its market share and sustaining monopoly interest rates. The bank's incentives for doing so increase under conditions of increased volatility of lending capacities of banks, more severe borrower-side moral hazard, and lower returns on the investment projects. Although this equilibrium is not always unique, with poor bank monitoring and corporate governance, a more intense banking competition renders the bad equilibrium the unique outcome.

This paper suggests that the main (and possibly unique) source of beta- and sigma-convergence in GDP per worker (i.e. labor productivity) across Italian regions over the 1980-2004 period is the change in technical and allocative efficiency, i.e. convergence in relative TFP levels. To obtain this result, I construct an approximation of the production frontier at different points in time using Data Envelope Analysis (DEA), and measure efficiency as the output-based distance from the frontier. This method is entirely data-driven, and does not require the specification of any particular functional form for technology. Changes in GDP per worker can be decomposed into changes in relative efficiency, changes due to overall technological progress, and changes due to capital deepening. My results suggest that: (i) differences in relative TFP are quantitatively important; (ii) while technological progress and capital deepening are the main, and equally important, forces behind the rightward shift in the distribution of GDP per worker, convergence in relative TFP is the main determinant of the change in its shape.