Research Database

We consider the existence of deterministically cycling steady state equilibria in a class of stationary overlapping generations models with sufficiently long (but, finite) lived agents. Preferences are of the discounted sum of utilities type with a fixed discount rate. Utility functions with large coefficients of relative risk aversion which generate strong income effects (relative to substitution effects) and backward bending offer curves are permitted. Lifetime endowment patterns are quite arbitrary. We show that if agents have a positive discount rate, then as agents1 lifespans get large, short period non-monetary cycles will disappear. Further, constant monetary steady states do not exist and therefore, neither do stationary monetary cycles of any period. We then consider the case where agents have a negative discount rate and show that there are robust examples in which constant monetary steady states as well as stationary monetary cycles (with undiminished amplitude) can occur no matter how long agents live.

A two country overlapping generations model is constructed, in which financial intermediation arises endogenously as an incentive compatible means of economizing on monitoring costs. Because of international credit markets. The model is used to generate the existence of transaction costs, money markets in the two countries are segmented and investors have differential access to predictions concerning the role of international intermediation in economic development, and to examine the nature of business cycle phenomena across alternative exchange rate regimes. Disturbances are propagated by a credit allocation mechanism, which also lends a novel flavor to the model's long run properties.

The fiscal year and the calendar year coincide for a large fraction of firms traded in the New York and American Stock Exchanges. It is therefore possible that part of the large positive abnormal return earned by stocks as a group during the first week of trading in January may be due to temporal resolution of uncertainty accompanying the end of the fiscal year. We study this hypothesis by examining whether stocks of firms with fiscal years ending in months other than December also realize positive abnormal returns, following the end of their fiscal years. We find that there are no excess returns for such firms in the first five trading days following the end of the fiscal year.

This paper investigates two methods of approximating the optimal decision rules of a stochastic, representative agent model which exhibits growth in steady state and cannot be expressed in linear–quadratic form. Both methods are modifications on the linear quadratic approximation technique proposed by Kydland and Prescott. It is shown that one of the solution methods leads to bizarre dynamic behavior, even with shocks of empirically reasonable magnitude. The other solution technique does not exhibit such bizarre behavior.

The Diamond-Dybvig model of banking (Journal of Political Economy, 1983) is amended by introducing communication barriers - these being implicit in their model and in most explanations of why people hold so-called liquid assets. These barriers imply the sequential-service constraint that Diamond and Dybvig imposed on private intermediation and have other implications: infeasibility of the policy that Diamond and Dybvig identify with deposit insurance and desirability of dependence of the realized return on deposits on the random order of withdrawals.

In this paper we analyze the constraints imposed by dynamic consistency in a model of optimal taxation. We assume that only distorting taxes are available to finance government consumption. Optimal fiscal policy requires the use of debt to smooth distortions over time. Dynamic consistency requires that governments at each point in time not have an incentive to default on the inherited debt. We consider policy functions which map the history of the economy including the actions of past governments into current decisions. A sustainable plan is a sequence of history-contingent policies which are optimal at each date given that future policies will be selected according to the plan. We show that if agents discount the future sufficiently little and if government consumption fluctuates then optimal sustainable plans yield policies and allocations which are identical to those under full commitment. We contrast our notion of dynamic consistency with other definitions.