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作者:Curtis, Chadwick C.; Lugauer, Steven; Mark, Nelson C.
作者单位:University of Richmond; University of Notre Dame; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This paper studies how demographic variation affects the aggregate household saving rate. We focus on China because it is experiencing an historic demographic transition and has had a massive increase in household saving. We conduct a quantitative investigation using a structural overlapping generations model that incorporates parental care through support for dependent children and financial transfers to retirees. The saving decisions in the parameterized model mimic many of the features obse...
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作者:de Blas, Beatriz; Russ, Katheryn N.
作者单位:Autonomous University of Madrid; University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:This paper presents a new model of Bertrand competition between heterogeneous firms in the open economy where the macroeconomic distribution of markups responds to the degree of trade openness and the underlying level of technology in each trading partner. The model's simple closed-form distributions for markups and pricing yield predictions that coincide with a number of stylized facts from the empirical literature on markups, pass-through, and trade openness which previously could be illustr...
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作者:Burstein, Ariel; Cravino, Javier
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要:We examine the implications of workhorse trade models for how aggregate productivity, real GDP and real consumption, as measured by statistical agencies, respond to changes in trade costs. In a range of models, changes in measured productivity are equal to the inverse of an export-share weighted average of changes in variable trade costs incurred domestically. Under certain conditions, despite the multiple biases in the CPI, measured real consumption captures the first-order effects of changes...
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作者:Song, Zheng; Storesletten, Kjetil; Wang, Yikai; Zilibotti, Fabrizio
作者单位:University of Chicago; University of Oslo; University of Zurich
摘要:We analyze intergenerational redistribution in emerging economies with the aid of an overlapping generations model with endogenous labor supply. Growth is initially high but declines over time. A version of the model calibrated to China is used to analyze the welfare effects of alternative pension reforms. Although a reform of the current system is necessary to achieve financial sustainability, delaying its implementation implies large welfare gains for the (poorer) current generations, imposi...
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作者:Ellison, Martin; Sargent, Thomas J.
作者单位:University of Oxford; New York University
摘要:The welfare cost of random consumption fluctuations is known from De Santis (2007) to be increasing in the level of uninsured idiosyncratic consumption risk. It is known from Barillas, Hansen, and Sargent (2009) to increase if agents care about robustness to model misspecification. We calculate the cost of business cycles in an economy where agents face idiosyncratic consumption risk and fear model misspecification, finding that idiosyncratic risk has a greater impact on the cost of business c...
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作者:Kapicka, Marek
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; Charles University Prague; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
摘要:I characterize optimal taxes in a life-cycle economy where ability and human capital are unobservable. I show that unobservable human capital effectively makes preferences over labor nonseparable across age. I generalize the static optimal tax formulas to account for such nonseparabilities and show how they depend both on own-Frisch labor elasticities and cross-Frisch labor elasticities. I calibrate the economy to US data. I find that the optimal marginal income taxes decrease with age, in con...
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作者:Jung, Philip; Kuester, Keith
作者单位:Dortmund University of Technology; University of Bonn
摘要:Within a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort, we show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation by a combination of a production tax and three labor-market policy instruments: vacancy subsidies, layoff taxes, and unemployment benefits. We derive analytical expressions for the optimal mix of these over the business cycle. Calibrating the model to the US economy under the assumption that wages are rig...
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作者:Fuller, David L.; Ravikumar, B.; Zhang, Yuzhe
作者单位:University of Wisconsin System; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis; Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station
摘要:An important incentive problem for the design of unemployment insurance is the fraudulent collection of unemployment benefits by workers who are gainfully employed. We show how to efficiently use a combination of tax/subsidy and monitoring to prevent such fraud. The optimal policy monitors the unemployed at fixed intervals. Employment tax is nonmonotonic: it increases between verifications but decreases after a verification. Unemployment benefits are relatively flat between verifications but d...
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作者:Hicks, Daniel L.
作者单位:University of Oklahoma System; University of Oklahoma - Norman
摘要:In response to income fluctuations, households smooth consumption by substituting between market expenditure and time inputs. This paper provides evidence of this substitution in the context of food consumption over transitory and permanent income fluctuations in Mexico. Household time investments drive a wedge between consumption and expenditure, amplifying measured expenditure volatility. Volatility decompositions for Mexico and the United States suggest that the extent of bias in expenditur...