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Working Paper
The computational experiment: an econometric tool
A specification of the steps in designing a computational experiment to address a well-posed quantitative question, emphasizing that the computational experiment is an econometric tool used in the task of deriving the quantitative implications of theory.
Working Paper
Endogenous money supply and the business cycle
An empirical and theoretical analysis of how changes in the monetary policy function affect the covariance structure of macroeconomic data.
Working Paper
Dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade: the S-curve
We provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data: the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in the terms of trade, but positively correlated with past movements. We document these same properties in a two-country stochastic growth model in which trade fluctuations reflect, in large part, the dynamics of capital formation. We find that the general equilibrium perspective is essential: The relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade depends ...
Journal Article
On the record: putting people into economic policy: a conversation with Finn Kydland
Finn Kydland, a Dallas Fed consultant since 1994, shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in economics with Edward C. Prescott for their groundbreaking work incorporating decisionmaking by individuals, households and firms into economic models.
Working Paper
Endogenous money supply and the business cycle
This paper documents changes in the cyclical behavior of nominal data series that appear after 1979:Q3 when the Federal Reserve implemented a policy to lower the inflation rate. Such changes were not apparent in real variables. A business cycle model with impulses to technology and a role for money is used to show how alternative money supply rules are expected to affect observed business cycle facts. In this model, changes in the money supply rules have almost no effect on the cyclical behavior of real variables, yet have a significant impact on the cyclical nature of nominal variables. ...
Working Paper
Mortgages and monetary policy
Mortgages are long-term nominal loans. Under incomplete asset markets, monetary policy is shown to affect housing investment and the economy through the cost of new mortgage borrowing and the value of payments on outstanding debt. These channels, distinct from traditional transmission of monetary policy, are evaluated within a general equilibrium model. Persistent monetary policy shocks, resembling the level factor in the nominal yield curve, have larger effects than transitory shocks, manifesting themselves as long-short spread. The transmission is stronger under adjustable- than fixed-rate ...
Discussion Paper
Dynamics of the trade balance and the terms of trade: the J-curve revisited
We provide a new interpretation of the statistical relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade. This relation includes the J-curve, the tendency for trade balances to be negatively correlated with contemporaneous movements in the terms of trade, positively correlated with lagged movements. We document this property in international data and show that it arises, as well, in a two-country stochastic growth model. In the model trade dynamics result, in large part, from fluctuations in investment. A favorable productivity shock in the domestic economy leads to an increase in ...
Working Paper
Argentina's recovery and "excess" capital shallowing of the 1990s
The paper examines Argentinas economic expansion in the 1990s through the lens of a parsimonious neoclassical growth model. The main finding is that investment remained considerably weaker than what the model would have predicted. The resulting excessive capital shallowing could be identified as a weakness of the rapid economic growth of the 1990s that may have played a role in Argentinas ultimate inability to escape the crisis that started to unfold towards the end of that decade. ; Economic Research Working Paper 0204
Working Paper
Argentina's capital gap puzzle
Argentinas GDP per working age person in 2003 was about the same as it was twenty years earlier and around fifteen percent below trend. By international standards that has been a dismal performance whose ultimate sources are important to uncover to eventually reverse that countrys seemingly secular decline. The purpose of this paper is precisely to take a first step towards that understanding. To that effect, we examine Argentinas recent growth experience, which includes two deep recessions and a recovery, with the lens of a neoclassical growth model that takes total factor productivity as ...
Working Paper
Ireland's great depression
We argue that Ireland experienced a great depression in the 1980s comparable in severity to the better known and more studied depression episodes of the interwar period. Using the business cycle accounting framework of Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2005), we examine the factors that lead to the depression and the subsequent recovery in the 1990s. We calculate efficiency, labor, investment and government wedges, and evaluate the contribution of each to the downturn and subsequent recovery. We find that the efficiency wedge on its own can account for a significant portion of the downturn, but ...