Search Results
Conference Paper
Closed and open economy models of business cycles with marked-up and sticky prices
Shifts in the extent of competition, which affect markup ratios, are possible sources of aggregate business fluctuations. markups are countercyclical, and booms are times at which the economy operates more efficiently. We begin with a real model in which markup ratios correspond to the prices of differentiated intermediate inputs relative to the price of undifferentiated final product. If the nominal prices of the differentiated goods are relatively sticky, then unexpected inflation reduces the relative price of intermediates and, thereby, mimics the output effects from an increase in ...
Working Paper
Economic effects of currency unions
This paper develops a new instrumental-variable (IV) approach to estimate the effects of different exchange rate regimes on bilateral outcomes. The basic idea is that the characteristics of the exchange rate regime between two countries (exchange rate variability, fixed or float, autonomous or common currencies) are partially related to the independent decisions of these countries to peg -explicitly or de facto- to a third currency, notably that of a main anchor. Our approach is to use this component of the exchange rate regime as an IV in regressions of bilateral outcomes. We illustrate the ...
Conference Paper
How can monetary policy be improved?
Conference Paper
Human capital and economic growth
Journal Article
Inflation and growth
Conference Paper
Inflation and growth
Working Paper
Tractable Rare Disaster Probability and Options-Pricing
We derive an option-pricing formula from recursive preference and estimate rare disaster probability. The new options-pricing formula applies to far-out-of-the money put options on the stock market when disaster risk dominates, the size distribution of disasters follows a power law, and the economy has a representative agent with Epstein-Zin utility. The formula conforms with options data on the S&P 500 index from 1983-2018 and for analogous indices for other countries. The disaster probability, inferred from monthly fixed effects, is highly correlated across countries, peaks during the ...