Search Results
Working Paper
Multiproduct firms and price-setting: theory and evidence from U.S. producer prices
In this paper, we establish three new facts about price-setting by multiproduct firms and contribute a model that can explain our findings. Our findings have important implications for real effects of nominal shocks and provide guidance for how to model pricing decisions of firms. On the empirical side, using micro-data on U.S. producer prices, we first show that firms selling more goods adjust their prices more frequently but on average by smaller amounts. Moreover, the higher the number of goods, the lower is the fraction of positive price changes and the more dispersed the distribution of ...
Working Paper
Hedging against the government: a solution to the home asset bias puzzle
This paper explains two puzzling facts: international nominal bonds and equity portfolios are biased domestically. In our two-country model, holding domestic government nominal debt provides a hedge against shocks to bond returns and the impact on taxes they induce. For this result, only two features are essential: some nominal risk and taxes falling only on domestic agents. A third feature explains why agents choose to hold primarily domestic equity: government spending falls on domestic goods. Then, an increase in government spending raises the returns on domestic equity, providing a hedge ...
Working Paper
Optimal monetary and fiscal policy at the zero lower bound in a small open economy
We investigate open economy dimensions of optimal monetary and fiscal policy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) in a small open economy model. At positive interest rates, the trade elasticity has negligible effects on optimal policy. In contrast, at the ZLB, the trade elasticity plays a key role in optimal policy prescriptions. The way in which the trade elasticity shapes policy depends on the government's ability to commit. Under discretion, the increase in government spending at the ZLB depends critically on the trade elasticity. Under commitment, the difference between future and current ...
Working Paper
Global Spillover Effects of US Uncertainty
We study spillover effects of US uncertainty fluctuations using panel data from fifteen emerging market economies (EMEs). A US uncertainty shock negatively affects EME stock prices and exchange rates, raises EME country spreads, and leads to capital outflows from them. Moreover, it decreases EME output, while increasing their consumer prices and net exports. The negative effects on output, exchange rates, and stock prices are weaker, but the effects on capital and trade flows stronger, for South American countries compared to other EMEs. We present a model of a small open economy that faces ...
Working Paper
Inflation dynamics: the role of public debt and policy regimes
We investigate the roles of a time-varying inflation target and monetary and fiscal policy stances on the dynamics of inflation in a DSGE model. Under an active monetary and passive fiscal policy regime, inflation closely follows the path of the inflation target and a stronger reaction of monetary policy to inflation decreases the equilibrium response of inflation to non-policy shocks. In sharp contrast, under an active fiscal and passive monetary policy regime, inflation moves in an opposite direction from the inflation target and a stronger reaction of monetary policy to inflation increases ...
Working Paper
Policy regimes, policy shifts, and U.S. business cycles
Using an estimated DSGE model that features monetary and fiscal policy interactions and allows for equilibrium indeterminacy, we find that a passive monetary and passive fiscal policy regime prevailed in the pre-Volcker period while an active monetary and passive fiscal policy regime prevailed post-Volcker. Since both monetary and fiscal policies were passive pre-Volcker, there was equilibrium indeterminacy which resulted in substantially different transmission mechanisms of policy as compared to conventional models: unanticipated increases in interest rates increased inflation and output ...
Working Paper
Effects of US quantitative easing on emerging market economies
We estimate international spillover effects of US Quantitative Easing (QE) on emerging market economies. Using a Bayesian VAR on monthly US macroeconomic and financial data, we first identify the US QE shock with non-recursive identifying restrictions. We estimate strong and robust macroeconomic and financial impacts of the US QE shock on US output, consumer prices, long-term yields, and asset prices. The identified US QE shock is then used in a monthly Bayesian panel VAR for emerging market economies to infer the spillover effects on these countries. We find that an expansionary US QE shock ...
Working Paper
Optimal monetary policy in a currency union with interest rate spreads
We introduce ?financial imperfections? - asymmetric net wealth positions, incomplete risksharing, and interest rate spread across member countries - in a prototypical two-country currency union model and study implications for monetary policy transmission mechanism and optimal policy. In addition to, and independent from, the standard transmission mechanism associated with nominal rigidities, financial imperfections introduce a wealth redistribution role for monetary policy. Moreover, the two mechanisms reinforce each other and amplify the effects of monetary policy. On the normative side, ...
Working Paper
Price indexation, habit formation, and the Generalized Taylor Principle
We prove that the Generalized Taylor Principle, under which the nominal interest rate reacts more than one-for-one to inflation in the long run, is a necessary and (under some extra mild restrictions on parameters) sufficient condition for determinacy in a sticky price model with positive steady-state inflation, interest rate smoothing in monetary policy, partial dynamic price indexation, and habit formation in consumption.
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Effects of Capital Tax Rate Changes
We study aggregate, distributional and welfare effects of a permanent reduction in the capital tax rate in a quantitative equilibrium model with capital-skill complementarity. Such a tax reform leads to expansionary long-run aggregate effects, but is coupled with an increase in wage and income inequality. Moreover, the expansionary aggregate effects are smaller when distortionary labor or consumption tax rates have to increase to finance the capital tax rate cut, driven by effects on labor supply decisions. An extension to a model with heterogeneous households shows that consumption ...