Research Database

This paper reports some empirical evidence on the relation between the expected real interest rate and monetary aggregates in postwar U.S. data. We find some evidence against the hypothesis, implied by the Real Business Cycle model of Litterman and Weiss (1985), that the expected real interest rate follows a univariate autoregressive process, not Granger-caused by monetary aggregates. Our findings, however, are consistent with a more general bivariate model--suggested by what Barro (1987, Chapter 5) refers to as "the basic market-clearing model"--in which the real rate depends on its own lagged values and on lagged output. Taking this bivariate model as our null hypothesis, we find no evidence that money-stock changes have a significant liquidity effect on the expected real interest rate.

The new classical view that macroeconomic fluctuations can be modeled as an equilibrium system perturbed by transitory monetary disturbances has been challenged in recent years by another equilibrium view of fluctuations, the so-called real business cycle theory. In this latter framework, shocks to the production function induce both intertemporal substitution of labor supply and permanent shifts in the stochastic trend of output. Monetary shocks, on the other hand, play only a minor role in this view of the cycle. Much of the empirical support for the real business cycle view of fluctuations is based on a re-examination of traditional methods for detrending economic time series. The issues raised by the real business cycle theorists are not new; indeed, they go back at least to the NBER's first business cycle studies. However, the real business cycle theorists attach a radical economic interpretation to what, on the surface, appears to be a purely technical note on the proper method for detrending economic data. This paper reviews the debate over stochastic trends, discusses the economic implications of the real business cycle interpretation of stochastic trend models, and weighs the time series evidence for some of the stronger claims made by real business cycle theorists. We conclude that, while this literature raises real and useful questions about the interpretation of observed fluctuations, the new classical view of the cycle is not ruled out by the data.

We report estimates of the dynamic effects of a technology shock, and then use these to estimate the parameters of a dynamic general equilibrium model with money. We find: (i) a positive technology shock drives up hours worked, consumption, investment and output; (ii) the positive response of hours worked reflects that the Fed has in practice accommodated technology shocks; (iii) model parameter values and functional forms that match the response of macroeconomic variables to monetary policy shocks also work well for technology shocks; (iv) while technology shocks account for a large fraction of the lower frequency component of economic fluctuations, they account for only a small part of the business cycle component of fluctuations.

This paper proposes a simple method for guiding researchers in developing quantitative models of economic fluctuations. We show that a large class of models, including models with various frictions, are equivalent to a prototype growth model with time varying wedges that, at least on face value, look like time-varying productivity, labor taxes, and capital income taxes. We label the time varying wedges as efficiency wedges, labor wedges, and investment wedges. We use data to measure these wedges and then feed them back into the prototype growth model. We then assess the fraction of fluctuations accounted for by these wedges during the great depressions of the 1930s in the United States, Germany, and Canada. We find that the efficiency and labor wedges in combination account for essentially all of the declines and subsequent recoveries. Investment wedge plays at best a minor role.

This paper presents a model of growth through technical progress. The nature and scope of what is learned is derived from a set of axioms, and optimal search behavior by agents is then analyzed. Agents can search intensively or extensively. Intensive search explores a technology in greater depth, while extensive search yields new technologies. Agents alternate between these two modes of search. The economy grows forever and the growth rate is bounded away from zero. The growth rate is on average higher during periods of intensive search than during periods of extensive search. Epochs of higher growth are initiated by discoveries that call for further intensive exploration. This mechanism is reminiscent of the process described by Schumpeter as causing long-wave business cycles. Serial correlation properties of output and growth stem from the presence of intensive rather than extensive search. The two key parameters are technological opportunity and the cost of the extensive search.

The objective of this paper is to investigate whether, in a Sidrauski type model with uncertainty, welfare maximization calls for following the famous "Chicago Rule". This question will be answered in the affirmative in this paper, i.e. social welfare optimization calls for a zero nominal interest rate on one-period bonds. The zero nominal interest rate, however, does not imply in an uncertain world that there is no systematic difference between the expected rate of deflation and the rate of time preference in an economy without growth. The magnitude of this difference turns out to be small, however. Numerical welfare comparisons are made between the optimal policy and policies in which the growth rate of money is fixed. The optimal policy requires that the monetary authorities react every period to the available information and they choose a growth level of the money stock that will set the interest rate equal to zero. If we compare the time paths of the real variables under the optimal policy with the time paths if the money supply decreases at a rate equal to the rate of time preference, then we see hardly any differences. The price dynamics can be very different, however. The paper also investigates the issue of superneutrality and finds that the quantitative deviations from superneutrality are substantial if a model with a shopping time technology is used. The neo-classical models in this paper are solved numerically using a technique developed in Marcet (1988).

The Federal Reserve Act erected a unique structure of government decisionmaking, independent with elaborate rules balancing internal power. Historical evidence suggests that this outcome was a response to public conflict over inflation's redistributive powers. This paper documents and formalizes this argument: in the face of conflict over redistributive inflation, policy by majority can lead to policy that is worse, even fo the majority, than obvious alternatives. The bargaining solution of an independent board with properly balanced interests leads to a better outcome. Technically, this paper extends earlier work in making policy preferences endogenous and in extending the notion of equilibirum policy to such a world. Substantively, this work provides a simple grounding of policy preferences-largely missing heretofore-linking game theoretic models of policy to historical evidence about the formation of an independent monetary authority.

This paper examines data on point and probabilistic forecasts of inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. We use this data to evaluate current strategies for the empirical modeling of forecast behavior. In particular, the analysis principally focuses on the relationship between ex post forecast errors and ex ante measures of uncertainty in order to assess the reliability of using proxies based on predictive accuracy to describe changes in predictive confidence. After we adjust the data to account for certain features in the conduct and construct of the survey, we find a significant and robust correlation between observed heteroskedasticity in the consensus forecast errors and forecast uncertainty. We also document that significant compositional effects are present in the data that are economically important in the case of forecast uncertainty, and may be related to differences in respondents' access to information.

We consider a model of international sovereign debt where repayment is enforced because defaulting nations lose their reputation and consequently, are excluded from international capital markets. Underlying the analysis of reputation is the hypothesis that borrowing countries have different, unobservable, attitudes towards the future. Some regimes are relatively myopic, while others are willing to make sacrifices to preserve their access to debt markets. Nations' preferences, while unobservable, are not fixed but evolve over time according to a Markov process. We make two main points. First we argue that in models of sovereign debt the length of the punishment interval that follows a default should be based on economic factors rather than being chosen arbitrarily. In our model, the length of the most natural punishment interval depends primarily on the preference parameters. Second, we point out that there is a more direct way for governments to regain their reputation. By offering to partially repay loans in default, a government can signal its reliability. This type of signaling can cause punishment interval equilibria to break down. We examine the historical record on lending resumption to argue that in almost all cases, some kind of partial repayment was made.

This paper is the first of a series of explorations in the relative performance and sources of productivity growth of U.S. businesses across industries and legal structure. In order to assemble the disparate data from various sources to develop a coherent productivity database, we developed a general system to manage data. The paper describes this system and then applies it by building such a database. The paper presents updated estimates of gross output, intermediate input use and value added using the BEA=s GPO data set. It supplements these data with estimates of missing data on intermediate input use and prices for the 1977-1986 period, and it concords these data, which are organized on a 1972 SIC basis, to the 1987 SIC in order to have consistent time series covering the last twenty-four years. It further refines these data by disaggregating them by legal form of organization. The paper also presents estimates of labor hours, investment, capital services and, consequently, multifactor productivity disaggregated by industry and legal form of organization, and it analyzes the contribution of various industries and business organizations to aggregate productivity. The paper also reconsiders these estimates in light of the surge in spending in advance of the century-date change.

We document properties of business cycles in ten countries over the last hundred years, contrasting the behavior of real quantities with that of the price level and the stock of money. Although the magnitude of output fluctuations has varied across countries and periods, relations among variables have been remarkably uniform. Consumption has generally been about as variable as output, and investment substantially more variable, and both have been strongly procydical. The trade balance has generally been countercyclical. The exception to this regularity is government purchases, which exhibit no systematic cyclical tendency. With respect to the size of output fluctuations, standard deviations are largest between the two world wars. In some countries (notably Australia and Canada) they are substantially larger prior to World War I than after World War II, but in others (notably Japan and the United Kingdom) there is little difference between these periods. Properties of price levels, in contrast, exhibit striking differences between periods. Inflation rates are more persistent after World War II than before, and price level fluctuations are typically procyclical before World War II, countercyclical afterward. We find no general tendency toward increased persistence in money growth rates, but find that fluctuations in money are less highly correlated with output in the postwar period.

We construct a model of the product cycle featuring endogenous innovation and endogenous technology transfer. Competitive entrepreneurs in the North expend resources to bring out new products whenever expected present discounted value of future oligopoly profits exceeds current product development costs. Each Northern oligopolist continuously faces the risk that its product will be copied by a Southern imitator, at which time its profit stream will come to an end. In the South, competitive entrepreneurs may devote resources to learning the production processes that have been developed in the North. There too, costs (of reverse engineering) must be covered by a stream of operating profits. We study the determinants of the long-run rate of growth of the world economy, and the long-run rate of technological diffusion. We also provide an analysis of the effects of exogenous events and of public policy on relative wage rates in the two regions.

In most developed countries, housing receives preferential tax treatment relative to other assets. In particular (i) the housing services provided by owner-occupied housing (generally referred to as imputed rents) are untaxed and (ii) mortgage interest payments reduce taxable income. The potential economic distortions resulting from the unique treatment of housing may be substantial, especially in light of the fact that residential capital accounts for more than half of the assets in the U.S. In particular, this tax treatment distorts the households' portfolio composition, their saving rates and their tenure choice. In this paper we build a general equilibrium model populated by heterogeneous agents subject to idiosyncratic risk. We use this framework to quantitatively assess the macroeconomic and distributional distortions introduced by this preferential tax treatment. We also study the effects of alternative tax schemes which could correct the current system's bias.

A cash-in-advance constraint on consumption is incorporated into a standard model of consumption and capital accumulation. Monetary policy consists of lump-sum cash transfers. Methods are developed for establishing the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium and for explicitly constructing this equilibrium. The model economy's dependence on monetary policy is explored.

This paper develops a new method for approximating dynamic competitive equilibria in economies in which competitive equilibrium is not necessarily Pareto optimal. The method involves finding approximate equilibrium policy functions by iterating on the stochastic Euler equations which characterize the economy's equilibrium. Two applications are presented: the stochastic growth model of Brock and Mirman (1971) modified to allow distortionary taxation, and a model of inflation and capital accumulation based on Stockman (1981). The computational speed and accuracy of this approach suggests that it may be a feasible method for studying suboptimal economies with large state spaces.

We estimate the effects of policy distortions on aggregate productivity. Based on a model of plant production and productivity uncertainty and heterogeneity, and using Chilean manufacturing data, we focus on the effect of taxation on the exit behavior of plants. We find that taxes do distort the liquidation decisions of firms, suggesting that policy distortions reduce the extent to which factors are reallocated towards the most productive plants. Our results have important consequences for growth and development, as policies that alter the measure of plants that operate in equilibrium change the short-run response of output to exogenous shocks and the long run level of aggregate TFP. In particular, we find that the amount of productivity lost due to excessive plant shutdowns are very large.

Across developing countries, capital market inefficiencies tend to decrease and external borrowing tends to sharply increase as national wealth rises. We construct a simple model of intertemporal trade under asymmetric information which provides a coherent explanation of both these phenomenon, without appealing to imperfect capital mobility. The model can be applied to a number of policy issues in LDC lending, including the debt overhang problem, and the impact of government guarantees of private debt to foreign creditors. In the two-country general equilibrium version of the model, an increase in wealth in the rich country can induce a decline in investment in the poor country via a "siphoning effect". Finally, we present some new empirical evidence regarding the link between LDC borrowing and per capita income.

This paper analyzes the political economy of growth as an issue of intergenerational distribution. The first part of the paper develops a model of endogenous growth via human capital accumulation in an overlapping generations setting. Equilibrium growth is inefficient due to the presence of an intergenerational externality. We characterize the set of Pareto efficient paths for physical and human capital accumulation, and find that there is a continuum of efficient growth rate-interest rate combinations. The preferred combination for an infinitely-lived planner will depend on the social discount rate. Competitive equilibrium with subsidized or mandated human capital accumulation may give rise to a Pareto efficient steady state, though for some parameters efficiency requires some intergenerational redistribution. We then argue that a social planner or government with an infinite horizon is incongruous in an OG model when the agents all have finite horizons. Hence the second part of the paper addresses the question of how a government whose decisionmakers reflect the finite horizons of their constituents would choose policies that affect physical and human capital accumulation. Specifically we assume that each government maximizes a weighted sum of utilities of those currently alive. Each period the government selects a policy that takes into account the effect (through state variables) on subsequent policy decisions (and hence on the welfare of the current young generation). Numerical methods involving polynomial approximations are used to compute equilibria under specific parametric assumptions. Equilibrium growth rates turn out to be substantially below efficient rates.

We use political-equilibrium theory and the neoclassical growth model to compare the quantitative properties of different tax systems. We first explore whether societies which can only use consumption taxes fare better than societies which can only use income taxes. We find that if government outlays are used mainly for redistribution through transfers, then the answer is no, contradicting conventional wisdom in public finance. The reason for this is that when taxes are endogenous, and voted on by a selfish constituency, the distortionary effects of taxation are taken into account in choosing the level of taxation. Hence, political equilibria have the property that taxes which are relatively distortionary will be relatively low. These results are overturned if the government outlays are used only for the providing of public goods, implying that less distortionary taxes give better outcomes. We also investigate the properties of a tax systems in which both consumption and income taxes are used and voted on simultaneously. Since the ability to use more tax instruments allows redistribution with less distortions, the total amount of transfers tends to be higher here than in one-tax systems. Typically, tax systems tend to be self-perpetuating in the sense that changes of the tax system result in a reduction in the welfare of the median voter.

Traditional theories of asset pricing assume there is complete market participation so all investors participate in all markets. In this case changes in preferences typically have only a small effect on asset prices and are not an important determinant of asset price volatility. However, there is considerable empirical evidence that most investors participate in a limited number of markets. We show that limited market participation can amplify the effect of changes in preferences so that an arbitrarily small degree of aggregate uncertainty in preferences can cause a large degree of price volatility. We also show that in addition to this equilibrium with limited participation and volatile asset prices, there may exist a Pareto-preferred equilibrium with complete participation and less volatility.

"Sudden Stops " experienced during emerging markets crises are characterized by large reversals of capital inflows and the current account, deep recessions, and collapses in asset prices. This paper proposes an open-economy equilibrium asset pricing model in which financial frictions cause Sudden Stops. Margin requirements impose a collateral constraint on foreign borrowing by domestic agents and trading costs distort asset trading by foreign securities firms. At equilibrium, margin constraints may or may not bind depending on portfolio decisions and equilibrium asset prices. If margin constraints do not bind, productivity shocks cause a moderate fall in consumption and a widening current account deficit. If debt is high relative to asset holdings, the same productivity shocks trigger margin calls forcing domestic agents to fire-sell equity to foreign traders. This sets off a Fisherian asset-price deflation and subsequent rounds of margin calls. A current account reversal and a collapse in consumption occur when equity sales cannot prevent a sharp rise in net foreign assets.

This paper is part of a project to model the interaction between heterogeneous agents in intertemporal stochastic models and to develop numerical algorithms to solve these kind of models. It is well-known that solving dynamic heterogeneous agent models is a challenging problem, since in these models the distribution of wealth and other characteristics evolve endogenously over time. Existing dynamic models in the literature contain therefore just two agents or other simplifying assumptions to limit the heterogeneity.

Briefly reviews the potential consequences of electronic money for the management of the government's balance sheet through open market operations and for the regulations governing the public and private issue of payment instruments.

As a network, a payment system is likely to exhibit network externalities and perhaps some public good characteristics. Such properties may be more pronounced in an electronic payment system, because of its greater reliance on communication infrastructures with high fixed and low variable costs, for instance. This paper presents the basic economics of network externalities and reviews some basic principles regarding public goods. It then asks what these phenomena imply about the role of the Federal Reserve in emerging payment systems. The general conclusion is that there is reason to be skeptical that network externalities and public goods will be significant sources of market failure in electronic payment systems. These phenomena, by themselves, give rise to no particular, essential central bank role in these markets.

In a world with two similar, developed economies, economic integration can cause a permanent increase in the worldwide rate of growth. Starting from a position of isolations, closer integration can be achieved by increasing trade in goods or by increasing flows of ideas. We consider two models with different specifications of the research and development sector that is the source of growth. Either form of integration can increase the long-run rate of growth if it encourages the worldwide exploitation of increasing returns to scale in the research and development sector.

Elasticities of substitutions between U.S. imports from Mexico, Canada, the rest of the world, and competing domestic production are estimated for 128 mining and manufacturing sectors, based on quarterly data for 1980-88. Results will be useful for subsequent computable general equilibrium (CGE) model simulations of North American trade, including the proposed free trade area between Mexico and the United States.

Inspired by the current European developments, we study equilibrium fiscal policy under alternative constitutional arrangements in a "federation" of countries. There are two levels of government: local and federal. Local policy redistributes across individuals and affects the probability of aggregate shocks, while federal policy shares international risk. Policies are chosen under majority rule. There is a moral hazard problem: federal risk-sharing can induce the local governments to enact policies that increase local risk. We investigate this incentive problem under alternative fiscal constitutions. In particular, we contrast a vertically ordered system like the EC with a horizontally ordered federal system like the US. These alternative arrangements are not neutral, in the sense that they create different incentives for policymakers and voters, and give rise to different political equilibria. A general conclusion is that, centralization of functions and power can be welfare improving under appropriate institutions. However, this conclusion only applies to the moral hazard problem and a federation where the countries are not too dissimilar.

This paper investigates the optimal tax structure in an overlapping generations model in which individuals face idiosyncratic income risk, borrowing constraints and lifetime uncertainty. The calibrated model economy produces some quantitative results that differ significantly from the findings of the previous research. The main finding in this imperfect insurance setup is that moving away from capital income taxation toward higher labor income taxation yields a (steady-state) welfare benefit of 1% of aggregate consumption compared with the 6% figure Lucas (1990) finds in an infinite-horizon, complete markets model. This is because replacing the tax on capital income with a higher tax on labor income redistributes resources away from the young working years during which borrowing constraints are more likely to bind. Furthermore, when the individuals have access to a private annuity market to insure against uncertain lifetimes, it becomes optimal to tax capital. When a consumption tax is made available, it is optimal to switch to consumption taxation. The welfare benefit from implementing this optimal plan is on the order of 1.5-3.2% of GNP.

We look for the scale effects on growth predicted by some theories of trade and growth based on dynamic returns to scale at the national or industry level. The increasing returns can arise from learning by doing, investment in human capital, research and development, or development of new products. We find some evidence of a relation between growth rates and the measures of scale implied by the learning by doing theory, especially total manufacturing. With respect to human capital, there is some evidence of a relation between growth rates and per capita measures of inputs into the human capital accumulation process, but little evidence of a relation with the scale of inputs. There is also little evidence that growth rates are related to measures of inputs into R&D. We find, however, that growth rates are related to measures of intra-industry trade, particularly when we control for scale of industry.

We examine the conditions under which steady states with low real interest rates—real rates substantially below the output growth rate—exist in an overlapping generations model with production, capital accumulation, a labor-leisure trade-off, technological progress, and agents who live for many periods. The number of periods in an agent's life (n) is left open for much of the analysis and determines the temporal interpretation of a time period. The qualitative properties of the model are largely invariant to different values of n. We find that two low real interest rate steady states exist for empirically plausible values of the parameters of the model. Outside liabilities such as fiat currency or unbacked government debt are valued in one of these steady states.

Different monetary aggregates covary very differently with short term nominal interest rates. Broad monetary aggregates like Ml and the monetary base covary positively with current and future values of short term interest rates. In contrast, the nonborrowed reserves of banks covary negatively with current and future interest rates. Observations like this 'sign switch' lie at the core of recent debates about the effects of monetary policy actions on short term interest rates. This paper develops a general equilibrium monetary business cycle model which is consistent with these facts. Our basic explanation of the 'sign switch' is that movements in nonborrowed reserves are dominated by exogenous shocks to monetary policy, while movements in the base and Ml are dominated by endogenous responses to non-policy shocks.

We present a model of vintage human capital. The economy exhibits exogenous deterministic technological change. Technology requires skills that are specific to the vintage. A stationary competitive equilibrium is defined and shown to exist and be unique, as well as Pareto optimal. The stationary equilibrium is characterized by an endogenous distribution of skilled workers across vintages. The distribution is shown to be single peaked, and under general conditions there is a lag between the time when a technology appears and the peak of its usage, what is known as diffusion. An increase in the rate of exogenous technological charge shirts the distribution of human capital to more recent vintages and increases the relative wage of the unskilled workers in each vintage.

We study a variant of the one-sector neoclassical growth model of Diamond in which capital investment must be credit financed, and an adverse selection problem appears in loan markets. The result is that the unfettered operation of credit markets leads to a one-dimensional indeterminacy of equilibrium. Many equilibria display economic fluctuations which do not vanish asymptotically; such equilibria are characterized by transitions between a Walrasian regime in which the adverse selection problem does not matter, and a regime of credit rationing in which it does. Moreover, for some configurations of parameters, all equilibria display such transitions for two reasons. One, the banking system imposes ceilings on credit when the economy expands and floors when it contracts because the quality of public information about the applicant pool of potential borrowers is negatively correlated with the demand for credit. Two, depositors believe that returns on bank deposits will be low (or high): these beliefs lead them to transfer savings out of (into) the banking system and into less (more) productive uses. The associated disintermediation (or its opposite) causes banks to contract (expand) credit. The result is a set of equilibrium interest rates on loans that validate depositors' original beliefs. We investigate the existence of perfect foresight equilibria displaying periodic (possibly asymmetric) cycles that consist of m periods of expansion followed by n periods of contraction, and propose an algorithm that detects all such cycles.