Search Results
Working Paper
Asset pricing lessons for modeling business cycles
We develop a model which accounts for the observed equity premium and average risk-free rate, without implying counterfactually high risk aversion. The model also does well in accounting for business-cycle phenomena. With respect to the conventional measures of business-cycle volatility and comovement with output, the model does roughly as well as the standard business-cycle model. On two other dimensions, the model?s business-cycle implications are actually improved. Its enhanced internal propagation allows it to account for the fact that there is positive persistence in output growth, and ...
Working Paper
The case against patents
The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity. There is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences.
Report
The intergenerational state: education and pensions
When credit markets to finance investment in human capital are missing, the competitive equilibrium allocation is inefficient. When generations overlap, this failure can be mitigated by properly designed social arrangements. We show that public financing of education and public pensions can be designed to implement an intergenerational transfer scheme supporting the complete market allocation. Neither the public financing of education nor the pension scheme we consider resemble standard ones. In our mechanism, via the public education system, the young borrow from the middle aged to invest in ...
Report
Perfectly competitive innovation
We construct a competitive model of innovation and growth under constant returns to scale. Previous models of growth under constant returns cannot model technological innovation. Current models of endogenous innovation rely on the interplay between increasing returns and monopolistic markets. In fact, established wisdom claims monopoly power to be instrumental for innovation and sees the nonrivalrous nature of ideas as a natural conduit to increasing returns. The results here challenge the positive description of previous models and the normative conclusion that monopoly through copyright and ...
Report
Growth cycles and market crashes
Market booms are often followed by dramatic falls. To explain this requires an asymmetry in the underlying shocks. A straightforward model of technological progress generates asymmetries that are also the source of growth cycles. Assuming a representative consumer, we show that the stock market generally rises, punctuated by occasional dramatic falls. With high risk aversion, bad news causes dramatic increases in prices. Bad news does not correspond to a contraction of existing production possibilities, but to a slowdown in their rate of expansion. This economy provides a model of endogenous ...
Report
Intellectual property and market size
Intellectual property protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. As the scale of the market increases, due either to economic and population growth or to the expansion of trade through treaties such as the World Trade Organization, this trade-off changes. We show that, generally speaking, the socially optimal amount of protection decreases as the scale of the market increases. We also provide simple empirical estimates of how much it should decrease.
Working Paper
Habit persistence, asset returns and the business cycles
We introduce two modifications into the standard real business cycles model: habit persistence preferences and limitations on intersectoral mobility. The resulting model is consistent with the observed mean equity premium, mean risk free rate and Sharpe ration on equity. With respect to the conventional measures of business cycle volatility and comovement, the model does roughly as well as the standard real business cycle model. On four other dimensions its business cycle implications represent a substantial improvement. It accounts for (i) persistence in output, (ii) the observation that ...
Report
The economics of ideas and intellectual property
Innovation and the adoption of new ideas are fundamental to economic progress. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function with and without government intervention. From a normative perspective, we examine the pitfalls of existing institutions, and how they might be improved. We highlight recent research by ourselves and others challenging the notion that government awards of monopoly through patents and copyright are ?the way? to provide appropriate incentives for innovation.
Report
Habit persistence, asset returns and the business cycle
We introduce two modifications into the standard real business cycle model: habit persistence preferences and limitations on intersectoral factor mobility. The resulting model is consistent with the observed mean equity premium, mean risk free rate and Sharpe ratio on equity. The model does roughly as well as the standard real business cycle model with respect to standard measures. On four other dimensions its business cycle implications represent a substantial improvement. It accounts for (i) persistence in output, (ii) the observation that employment across different sectors moves together ...
Journal Article
What happened to the U.S. stock market? accounting for the past 50 years
The extreme volatility of stock market values has been the subject of a large body of literature. Previous research focused on the short run because of a widespread belief that in the long run the market reverts to well-established fundamentals. The authors' research suggests this belief should be questioned. First, they show actual dividends cannot account for the secular trends of stock market values. They then consider a more comprehensive measure of capital income, which displays large secular fluctuations that roughly coincide with changes in stock market trends. Under perfect foresight, ...