Research Database

This article analyzes several proposals to build work incentives into the U.S. welfare system. It concludes that the most cost effective way to do that is to offer a work subsidy to all low-income single parents—in other words, to simply pay them for working in the labor market. This conclusion is based on a model of the labor force participation behavior of low-income single mothers that the author developed with Robert Moffitt. Among the proposals evaluated in the article, besides the work subsidy, are proposals to reduce the rate that welfare benefits are reduced when welfare recipients work, to provide wage subsidies to low-wage workers, to expand the earned income tax credit, and to subsidize the fixed costs of working.

A two-country Real Business Cycle (RBC) model is used to study the behavior of the United States trade balance. In this model, economic fluctuations are driven by productivity shocks and by variations in government purchases and in distorting taxes. The model is simulated using quarterly data on total factor productivity, government purchases, and the average tax rate in the seven major industrial countries during the period 1975–91. A version of the model that postulates complete international asset markets—as frequently assumed in the International RBC literature (see, e.g., Backus, Kehoe, and Kydland 1992)—fails to explain the observed behavior of the U.S. trade balance. In contrast, a version with incomplete asset markets, in which only debt contracts can be used for international capital flows, tracks the behavior of the U.S. trade balance fairly closely.

We study a representative agent, open economy in which government-provided services that enter the domestic production function must be financed with distortionary taxes, and focus on the optimal size of government and the associated optimal tax rate. If the government can precommit its actions, it maximizes individual welfare by announcing and implementing a constant tax rate, which we label the “orthodox” tax rate. This tax rate is time inconsistent, and under discretion the government implements a tax that maximizes each period’s output. We label this the “populist” tax rate. It may be higher or lower than the “orthodox” rate, depending on whether the elasticity of substitution in production between private and public inputs is below or above one. We also characterize the second-best tax rate that can be sustained through trigger strategies. This best sustainable tax rate is constant and lies between the “orthodox” and “populist” extremes.

This paper describes a dynamic model in which the provision mechanism for a public project is itself the object of locational choice of individuals. Individuals in an ongoing society must choose between a Majority Rule mechanism and a Voluntary Contribution mechanism. Each mechanism determines a funding decision for a local public project which is repeated over time. Generations of individuals asynchronously supercede their “parents,” creating an entry/exit process that allows individuals with possibly different beliefs to enter society. A self confirming equilibrium (SCE) belief process describes an evolution of beliefs in this society consistent with a self confirming equilibrium of the repeated location/provision game. Due to Fudenberg and Levine (1993), SCE is weaker than Nash as it requires correct forecasts of an individual only along the realized path during the individual's lifetime. Since individuals' beliefs on out-of-equilibrium behavior may vary, an SCE belief process may admit random and heterogenous forecasts in the form of mutations of beliefs across generations as newborn individuals enter the system. It is shown that the process with belief mutation results in a globally absorbing state in which the Majority Rule mechanism is the unique survivor of the two.

This paper investigates why high income households in the United States save on average more than low income households in cross-section data. The three explanations considered are (1) age differences across households, (2) temporary earnings shocks, and (3) the structure of transfer payments. We use a calibrated life-cycle model to evaluate the quantitative importance of these explanations and find that age and the structure of transfers are quantitatively important in producing the cross-section pattern of United States savings rates. Temporary shocks are of secondary importance.

This article develops a simple model that captures a concern for relative standing, or status. This concern is instrumental, in the sense that individuals do not get utility directly from their relative standing, but, rather, the concern is induced because their relative standing affects their consumption of standard commodities. The article investigates the consequences of a concern for relative wealth in models in which individuals are making labor/leisure decisions. The analysis shows how individuals' decisions are affected by the aggregate income distribution and how the concern for relative wealth can generate behavior that can be interpreted as conspicuous consumption when wealth is not directly observable.

Often, researchers wish to analyze nonlinear dynamic discrete-time stochastic models. This paper provides a toolkit for solving such models easily, building on log-linearizing the necessary equations characterizing the equilibrium and solving for the recursive equilibrium law of motion with the method of undetermined coefficients. The innovation here is to demonstrate that log-linearizing the nonlinear equations can usually be done without the need for explicit differentiation, to extend the method of undetermined coefficients to models with more endogenous state variables than expectational equations, to provide a general solution and to provide frequency-domain techniques to calculate the second order properties of the model in its HP-filtered version without resorting to simulations. Since the method is an Euler-equation based approach rather than an approach based on solving a social planners problem, models with externalities or distortionary taxation do not pose additional problems. MATLAB programs to carry out the calculations in this paper are made available. This paper should be useful for researchers and Ph.D. students alike.

This article describes three long-run monetary facts derived by examining data for 110 countries over a 30-year period, using three definitions of a country's money supply and two subsamples of countries: (1) Growth rates of the money supply and the general price level are highly correlated for all three money definitions, for the full sample of countries, and for both subsamples. (2) The growth rates of money and real output are not correlated, except for a subsample of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, where these growth rates are positively correlated. (3) The rate of inflation and the growth rate of real output are essentially uncorrelated.

This article describes the academic debate about the usefulness of the capital asset pricing model (the CAPM) developed by Sharpe and Lintner. First the article describes the data the model is meant to explain—the historical average returns for various types of assets over long time periods. Then the article develops a version of the CAPM and describes how it measures the risk of investing in particular assets. Finally the article describes the results of competing studies of the model's validity. Included are studies that support the CAPM (Black; Black, Jensen, and Scholes; Fama and MacBeth), studies that challenge it (Banz; Fama and French), and studies that challenge those challenges (Amihud, Christensen, and Mendelson; Black; Breen and Korajczyk; Jagannathan and Wang; Kothari, Shanken, and Sloan). The article concludes by suggesting that, while academic debate continues, the CAPM may still be useful for those interested in the long run.

Historically, competition, or the extension of markets, has repeatedly brought tremendous increases in wealth. However, there is still plenty of uncertainty among economists as to why that is so. This article develops a model in which competition, modeled as the movement of goods between two areas, reduces resistance to new technology and, hence, leads to increased technology adoption and wealth. Here, the extension of markets leads to wealth increases because it reduces activities that block the use of new, more productive technology.