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作者:Boel, Paola; Camera, Gabriele
作者单位:Bowdoin College; Purdue University System; Purdue University
摘要:We construct a monetary economy with heterogeneity in discounting and consumption risk. Agents can insure against this risk with money and nominal government bonds, but all trades must be monetary. We demonstrate that a deflationary policy a la Friedman cannot sustain the constrained-efficient allocation as no-arbitrage imposes too stringent a bound on the return money can pay. The constrained-efficient allocation can be sustained when bonds have positive yields and, under certain conditions, ...
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作者:Conesa, Juan Carlos; Krueger, Dirk
作者单位:Goethe University Frankfurt; Autonomous University of Barcelona; University of Pennsylvania; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This paper computes the optimal progressivity of the income tax code in a dynamic general equilibrium model with household heterogeneity in which uninsurable labor productivity risk gives rise to a nontrivial income and wealth distribution. A progressive tax system serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets and enhances an equal distribution of economic welfare. These beneficial effects of a progressive tax system have to be traded off against the efficiency loss arising from...
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作者:Luengo-Prado, Maria Jose
作者单位:Northeastern University
摘要:We examine a model that generalizes the standard buffer-stock model of saving to accommodate durables, nondurables, down payment requirements, and adjustment costs in the durables market. We find that nondurable consumption becomes more volatile relative to income as down payments decrease at the individual and at the aggregate level. Moreover, for plausible parameter values, the model can explain the excess smoothness and excess sensitivity observed in U.S. aggregate data. The result follows ...
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作者:Love, David
作者单位:Williams College
摘要:We use a dynamic programming model to explore the possibility and extent of precautionary saving in tax-sheltered accounts such as the 401(k). The main policy experiment examines the behavior of saving for different levels of unemployment insurance (UI), which is a perfect substitute for precautionary saving against job loss. Our results indicate that increasing the generosity of UI crowds out 401(k) contributions made by younger workers, who save primarily for precautionary reasons. At the ag...
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作者:Samaniego, Roberto M.
作者单位:George Washington University; George Washington University
摘要:There is evidence linking the productivity slowdown of the 1970s and 1980s to changing patterns of technological adoption related to the spread of information technology (IT). Notably, IT appears to require plant-level reorganization for its full implementation. I develop a general equilibrium model in which organizational capital plays a central role in establishment dynamics, and study its transition path after a shock in the form of an incompatibility between new technologies and previously...
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作者:Mills, David C., Jr.
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要:I explore alternative central bank policies for liquidity provision in a model of payments. I use a mechanism design approach so that agents' incentives to default are explicit and contingent on the credit policy designed. In the first policy, the central bank invests in costly enforcement and charges an interest rate to recover costs. I show that the second-best solution is not distortionary. In the second policy, the central bank requires collateral. If collateral does not bear an opportunit...
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作者:Harrison, Sharon G.; Weder, Mark
作者单位:Columbia University; Humboldt University of Berlin; Humboldt University of Berlin; University of Adelaide
摘要:We apply a dynamic general equilibrium model to the period of the U.S. Great Depression. In particular, we examine a modification of the real business cycle model in which the possibility of indeterminacy of equilibria arises. In other words, agents' self-fulfilling expectations can serve as a primary impulse behind fluctuations. We find that the model, driven only by these measured sunspot shocks, can explain well the entire Depression era. That is, the decline from 1929 to 1932, the subseque...
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作者:Alexander, Gordon J.; Baptista, Alexandre M.
作者单位:University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; George Washington University
摘要:We examine the economic implications arising from a bank using a VaR-constrained mean-variance model for the selection of its trading portfolio as a consequence of the Basle Capital Accord. Surprisingly, we show that when a VaR constraint is imposed, it is plausible that certain banks will end up selecting 'riskier' portfolios than they would have chosen in the absence of the constraint. Accordingly, regulators such as the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision should be aware that allowing a ...
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作者:Burstein, Ariel T.
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要:This paper studies a state-dependent pricing model in which firms face a fixed cost of changing their pricing plans. A pricing plan specifies an entire sequence of time-varying future prices. Allowing firms to choose a pricing plan rather than a single price generates inflation inertia in the response of the economy to small changes in the growth rate of money. Allowing firms to choose when to change their pricing plan generates a non-linear response of inflation and output to small and large ...
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作者:Erceg, Christopher; Levin, Andrew
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要:We document that the durable goods sector is much more interest-sensitive than the nondurables sector, and then investigate the implications of these sectoral differences for monetary policy. We formulate a two-sector general equilibrium model that is calibrated both to match the sectoral responses to a monetary shock derived from our empirical VAR and to imply an empirically realistic degree of sectoral output volatility and comovement. While the social welfare function involves sector-specif...