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作者：Iacoviello, Matteo; Neri, Stefano
作者单位：Boston College; European Central Bank; Bank of Italy
摘要：We study sources and consequences of fluctuations in the US housing market. Slow technological progress in the housing sector explains the upward trend in real housing prices of the last 40 years. Over the business cycle, housing demand and housing technology shocks explain one-quarter each of the volatility of housing investment and housing prices. Monetary factors explain less than 20 percent, but have played a bigger role in the housing cycle at the turn of the century. We show that the hou...
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作者：de Paula, Aureo; Scheinkman, Jose A.
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania; Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We present an equilibrium model of tax avoidance and test its implications using a survey of firms in Brazil. In the model, the credit method used to collect value-added tax (VAT) creates informality chains-clients or suppliers of informal firms are more likely to be informal. An increase in enforcement in a production stage increases formality downstream and upstream. Various empirical measures of formality of suppliers and buyers, and of enforcement downstream and upstream, are positively co...
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作者：Deaton, Angus; Heston, Alan
作者单位：Princeton University; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：We provide an overview of the theory and practice of constructing PPPs. We focus on four practical areas: how to handle international differences in quality; the treatment of urban and rural areas of large countries; how to estimate prices for government services, health, and education; and the effects of the regional structure of the latest International Comparison Program for 2005. We discuss revisions of the Penn World Table, and their effects on econometric analysis, and include health war...
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作者：Canova, Fabio; Gambetti, Luca
作者单位：Pompeu Fabra University; Autonomous University of Barcelona
摘要：We examine the role of expectations in the Great Moderation episode. We derive theoretical restrictions in a New-Keynesian model and test them using measures of expectations obtained from survey data, the Greenbook and bond markets. Expectations explain the dynamics of inflation and interest rates but their importance is roughly unchanged over time. Systems with and without expectations display similar reduced form characteristics. Results are robust to changes in the structure of the empirica...
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作者：Obstfeld, Maurice; Shambaugh, Jay C.; Taylor, Alan M.
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; Dartmouth College; University of California System; University of California Davis
摘要：The rapid growth of international reserves, a development concentrated in the emerging markets, remains a puzzle. In this paper, we suggest that a model based on financial stability and financial openness goes far toward explaining reserve holdings in the modern era of globalized capital markets. The size of domestic financial liabilities that could potentially be converted into foreign currency (M2), financial openness, the ability to access foreign currency through debt markets, and exchange...
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作者：Jones, Charles I.; Romer, Paul M.
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Stanford University
摘要：In 1961, Nicholas Kaldor highlighted six stylized facts to summarize the patterns that economists had discovered in national income accounts and to shape the growth models being developed to explain them. Redoing this exercise today shows just how much progress we have made. In contrast to Kaldor's facts, which revolved around a single state variable, physical capital, our updated facts force consideration of four far more interesting variables: ideas, institutions, population, and human capit...
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作者：Burke, Paul J.; Leigh, Andrew
作者单位：Australian National University; Australian National University
摘要：Does faster economic growth increase pressure for democratic change, or reduce it? Using data for 154 countries for the period 1963-2007, we examine the short-run relationship between economic growth and moves toward and away from greater democracy. To address the potential endogeneity of economic growth, we use variation in precipitation, temperatures, and commodity prices as instruments for a country's rate of economic growth. Our results indicate that more rapid economic growth reduces the ...
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作者：McGrattan, Ellen R.; Prescott, Edward C.
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Minneapolis; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
摘要：For the 1990s, the basic neoclassical growth model predicts a depressed economy, when in fact the US economy boomed. We extend the base model by introducing intangible investment and non-neutral technology change with respect to producing intangible investment goods and find that the 1990s are not puzzling in light of this new theory. There is microeconomic and macroeconomic evidence motivating our extension, and the theory's predictions are in conformity with US national accounts and capital ...
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作者：Comin, Diego; Easterly, William; Gong, Erick
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; New York University; University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要：We assemble a dataset on technology adoption in 1000 BC, 0 AD, and 1500 AD for the predecessors to today's nation states. Technological differences are surprisingly persistent over long periods of time. Our most interesting, strong, and robust results are for the association of 1500 AD technology with per capita income and technology adoption today. We also find robust and significant technological persistence from 1000 BC to 0 AD, and front 0 AD to 1500 AD. The evidence is consistent with a m...
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作者：Guerkaynak, Refet S.; Sack, Brian; Wright, Jonathan H.
作者单位：Ihsan Dogramaci Bilkent University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; Johns Hopkins University
摘要：For over ten years, the Treasury has issued index-linked debt. This paper describes the methodology for fitting a smoothed yield curve to these securities that is used at the Federal Reserve Board every day, and makes the estimates public. Comparison with the corresponding nominal yield curve allows measures of inflation compensation to be computed. We discuss the interpretation of inflation compensation, and provide evidence that it is not a pure measure of inflation expectations being distor...
