Search Results
Working Paper
Endogenous Labor Supply in an Estimated New-Keynesian Model: Nominal versus Real Rigidities
Standard macroeconomic models find it difficult to reconcile slow recoveries and missing disinflations after deep deteriorations in the labor market. We develop and estimate a New-Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market, endogenous intensive and extensive labor supply decisions, and financial frictions. We conclude that the estimated combination of a low degree of nominal wage rigidities and a high degree of real wage rigidities, together with a small role for pre-match costs relative to post-match costs, is key in successfully forecasting slow recoveries in ...
Working Paper
Beyond the Unemployment Rate: A Structural Labor Market Indicator
Labor market variables frequently send conflicting signals about the degree of slack or tightness, often complicating policy assessments at critical junctures. This paper develops a Structural Labor Market Indicator (SLMI) for the U.S. economy that addresses the limitations of existing univariate measures or atheoretical statistical approaches that synthesize multiple labor market indicators but cannot distinguish between supply and demand driving forces. We construct the SLMI using a medium scale New Keynesian DSGE model featuring search and matching frictions, endogenous labor force ...
Working Paper
A Model of Endogenous Loan Quality and the Collapse of the Shadow Banking System
I develop a macroeconomic model with a financial sector, in which banks can finance risky projects (loans) and can affect their quality by exerting a costly screening effort. Informational frictions regarding the observability of loan characteristics limit the amount of external funds that banks can raise. In this framework I consider two possible types of financial intermediation, traditional banking (TB) and shadow banking (SB), differing in the level of diversification across projects. In particular, shadow banks, by pooling different loans, improve on the diversification of their ...
Working Paper
Risky Mortgages, Bank Leverage and Credit Policy
Two key channels that allowed the 2007-2009 mortgage crisis to severely impact the real economy were: a housing net worth channel, as defined by Mian and Sufi (2014), which affected the wealth of leveraged households; and a bank net worth channel, which reduced the ability of financial intermediaries to provide credit. To capture these features of the Great Recession, I develop a DSGE model with balance-sheet constrained banks financing both risky mortgages and productive capital. Mortgages are provided to agents facing idiosyncratic housing depreciation risk, implying an endogenous default ...
Working Paper
Endogenous Labor Supply in an Estimated New-Keynesian Model: Nominal versus Real Rigidities
The deep deterioration in the labor market during the Great Recession, the subsequent slow recovery, and the missing disinflation are hard to reconcile for standard macroeconomic models. We develop and estimate a New-Keynesian model with financial frictions, search and matching frictions in the labor market, and endogenous intensive and extensive labor supply decisions. We conclude that the estimated combination of the low degree of nominal wage rigidities and high degree of real wage rigidities, together with the small role of pre-match costs relative to post-match costs, are key in ...
Discussion Paper
The Global Recovery: Lessons from the Past
The downturn in global economic activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was unique both for its causes and for its severity. Even though, on a global scale, the recent contraction is unprecedented in modern times, it is useful to look at the consequences of large recessions which affected individual countries in the past.
Working Paper
Corporate Debt Maturity and Business Cycle Fluctuations
Long-term debt is the main source of firm-financing in the U.S. We show that accounting for debt maturity is crucial for understanding business cycle dynamics. We develop a macroeconomic model with defaultable long-term debt and equity adjustment costs. With long-term debt, firms have an incentive to increase leverage in order to dilute the value of outstanding debt. When equity issuance is costly, this incentive helps firms raise more debt through a debt dilution channel and mitigates the decline in net worth through a balance sheet channel, dampening the decline in investment in response to ...
Working Paper
Household Debt and the Heterogeneous Effects of Forward Guidance
We develop an incomplete-markets heterogeneous agent New-Keynesian (HANK) model in which households are allowed to lend and borrow, subject to a borrowing constraint. We show that, in this framework, forward guidance, that is the promise by the central bank to lower future interest rates, can be a powerful policy tool, especially when the economy is in a liquidity trap. In our model, the power of forward guidance is amplified by three redistributive channels, absent in a representative agent new- Keynesian model (RANK) or in a HANK model without private debt. First, expected lower rates imply ...
Working Paper
Devaluations, Deposit Dollarization, and Household Heterogeneity
We study the aggregate and re-distributive effects of currency devaluations in a small open economy heterogeneous households model with leverage-constrained banks. Our framework captures three stylized facts about liability dollarization in emerging economies: i) banks and firms borrow in foreign currency; ii) households save in dollar-denominated local bank deposits; and iii) such deposits are mainly held by wealthier households. The resulting currency mismatch causes an erosion of banks' net worth during a devaluation, depressing credit supply. The ensuing macroeconomic downturn is ...
Working Paper
The Inflationary Effects of Sectoral Reallocation
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented shift of consumption from services to goods. We study this demand reallocation in a multi-sector model featuring sticky prices, input-output linkages, and labor reallocation costs. Reallocation costs hamper the increase in the supply of goods, causing inflationary pressures. These pressures are amplified by the fact that goods prices are more flexible than services prices. We estimate the model allowing for demand reallocation, sectoral productivity, and aggregate labor supply shocks. The demand reallocation shock explains a large portion of ...