Research Database

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.

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.

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.

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.

The data and press commentaries studied in this paper call for a reinterpretation of the French inflationary crisis and its stabilization in 1926. In contrast with T. J. Sargent's (1984) interpretation, there is evidence that the budgetary situation was well in hand and that only fear of a capital levy made the public unwilling to buy government bonds. As a result, the government had to repay the bonds coming to maturity with monetary financing. Only when Poincare introduced a bill to shift the tax burden off bondholders did the demand for government bonds recover and inflation stop.

We explain why contracting parties may choose ambiguous financial contracts. Introducing ambiguity may be optimal, even when unambiguous contracts can be costlessly written. We show that an ambiguous contract has two advantages. First, it permits the guarantor to sacrifice reputational capital in order to preserve financial capital as well as information reusability in states where such tradeoff is optimal. Second, it fosters the development of reputation. This theory is then used to explain ambiguity in mutual fund contracts, bank loan commitments, bank holding company relationships, the investment banker's "highly confident" letter, non-recourse debt contracts in project financing, and other financial contracts.

We describe a stochastic economic environment in which the mix of money and trade credit used as means of payment is endogenous. The economy has an infinite horizon, spatial separation and a credit-related transaction cost, but no capital. We find that the equilibrium prices of arbitrary contingent claims to future currency differ from those from one-good cash-in-advance models. This anomaly is directly related to the endogeneity of the mix of media of exchange used. In particular, nominal interest rates affect the risk-free real rate of return. The model also has implications for some long-standing issues in monetary policy and for time series analysis using money and trade credit.

We extend the analysis of Kiyotaki and Wright, who study an economy in which the different commodities that serve as media of exchange are determined endogenously. Kiyotaki and Wright consider only symmetric, steady-state, pure-strategy equilibria, and find that for some parameter values no such equilibria exist. We consider mixed-strategy equilibria and dynamic equilibria. We prove that a steady-state equilibrium exists for all parameter values and that the number of steady-state equilibria is generically finite. We also show, however, that there may be a continuum of dynamic equilibria. Further, some dynamic equilibria display cycles.

In this paper we examine the evidence for two competing views of how monetary and financial disturbances influenced the real economy during the national banking era, 1880-1914. According to the monetarist view, monetary disturbances affected the real economy through changes on the liability side of the banking system's balance sheet independent of the composition of bank portfolios. According to the credit rationing view, equilibrium credit rationing in a world of asymmetric information can explain short-run fluctuations in real output. Using structural VARs we incorporate monetary variables in credit models and credit variables in monetarist models, with inconclusive results. To resolve this ambiguity, we invoke the institutional features of the national banking era. Most of the variation in bank loans is accounted for by loans secured by stock, which in turn reflect volatility in the stock market. When account is taken of the stock market, the influence of credit in the VAR model is greatly reduced, while the influence of money remains robust. The breakdown of the composition of bank loans into stock market loans (traded in open asset markets) and other business loans (a possible setting for credit rationing) reveals that other business loans remained remarkably stable over the business cycle.

Our goal is to provide a theoretical framework in which both positive and normative aspects of international currency can be addressed in a systematic way. To this end, we use the framework of random matching games and develop a two country model of the world economy, in which two national fiat currencies compete and may be circulated as media of exchange. There are multiple equilibria, which differ in the areas of circulation of the two currencies. In one equilibrium, the two national currencies are circulated only locally. In another, one of the national currencies is circulated as an international currency. There is also an equilibrium in which both currencies are accepted internationally. We also find an equilibrium in which the two currencies are directly exchanged. The existence conditions of these equilibria are characterized, using the relative country size and the degree of economic integration as the key parameters. In order to generate sharper predictions in the presence of multiple equilibria, we discuss an evolutionary approach to equilibrium selection, which is used to explain the evolution of the international currency as the two economies become more integrated. Some welfare implications are also discussed. For example, a country can improve its national welfare by letting its own currency circulated internationally, provided the domestic circulation is controlled for. When the total supply is fixed, however, a resulting currency shortage may reduce the national welfare.

This paper proposes a model of diversifiable uncertainty, irreversible investment decisions, and endogenous growth. The detailed microeconomic structure of the model makes it possible to study the. general equilibrium effects of obstacles to labor mobility, due to institutional as well as technological features of the economy. Labor mobility costs reduce private returns to investment, and the resulting slower rate of endogenous growth unambiguously lowers a representative individual's welfare. Turnover costs can have positive effects on full employment equilibrium wages when all external effects are disregarded: this may help explain why policy and institutions often tend to decrease labor mobility in reality, rather than to enhance it. Lower flexibility, however, reduces the growth rate of wages in endogenous growth equilibrium, with negative welfare effects even for agents who own only labor.

In this paper we study the relationship between wealth, income distribution and growth in a game-theoretic context in which property rights are not completely enforcable. We consider equilibrium paths of accumulation which yield players utilities that are at least as high as those that they could obtain by appropriating higher consumption at the present and suffering retaliation later on. We focus on those subgame perfect equilibria which are constrained Pareto-efficient (second best). In this set of equilibria we study how the level of wealth affects growth. In particular we consider cases which produce classical traps (with standard concave technologies): growth may not be possible from low levels of wealth because of incentive constraints while policies (sometimes even first-best policies) that lead to growth are sustainable as equilibria from high levels of wealth. We also study cases which we classify as the "Mancur Olson" type: first best policies are used at low levels of wealth along these constrained Pareto efficient equilibria, but first best policies are not sustainable at higher levels of wealth where growth slows down. We also consider the unequal weighting of players to ace the subgame perfect equiliria on the constrained Pareto frontier. We explore the relation between sustainable growth rates and the level of inequality in the distribution of income.

This paper develops the Kiyotaki-Wright model of monetary general equilibrium in which trade is bilateral and enforced by requiring that transactions be quid pro quo, and studies which goods are chosen, and under what conditions, as media of exchange. We prove the existence of a rational expectations equilibrium in which agents' expectations concerning trading opportunities are realized in the present and all future periods. We also show that, exceptional cases aside, no rational expectations barter equilibrium exists; that an equilibrium generally supports multiple money goods; and that a fiat money (i.e., a good that is produced, has minimum storage costs, but is not consumed) cannot be traded in rational expectations equilibrium.

Results in Lucas (1987) suggest that if public policy can affect the growth rate of the economy, the welfare implications of alternative policies will be large. In this paper, a stochastic, dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous growth and money is examined. In this setting, inflation lowers growth through its effect on the return to work. However, the welfare costs of higher inflation are extremely modest.

Handout for "Policy Concerning Water Markets": Using Water Better: A Market-Based Approach to California's Water Crisis, by Ronald H. Schmidt and Frederick Cannon. Published 1991 by Bay Area Economic Forum (Calif.), Association of Bay Area Governments, Bay Area Council (Calif.). Handout for "Environmental Issues and Ag Lending": Land Values and Environmental Regulation by Michael D. Boehlge, Philip M. Raup and Kent D. Olson. University of Minnesota Department of Agricutural and Applied Economics Staff Paper P91-3, January 1991.

Technology change is modeled as the result of decisions of individuals and groups of individuals to adopt more advanced technologies. The structure is calibrated to the U.S. and postwar Japan growth experiences. Using this calibrated structure we explore how large the disparity in the effective tax rates on the returns to adopting technologies must be to account for the huge observed disparity in per capita income across countries. We find that this disparity is not implausibly large.