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Working Paper
Optimal minimum wage in a competitive economy
This paper studies the use of a minimum wage law to implement the optimal redistribution policy when a distorting tax-transfer scheme is also available. The authors build a static general equilibrium model with a Ramsey planner making decisions on taxes, transfers, and minimum wage levels. Workers are assumed to differ only in their productivity. The authors find that optimal redistribution may imply the use of only taxes and transfers, only a minimum wage, or the proper combination of both policies. The key factor driving their results is the reaction of the demand for low-skilled labor to ...
Working Paper
Fiscal volatility shocks and economic activity
The authors study the effects of changes in uncertainty about future fiscal policy on aggregate economic activity. Fiscal deficits and public debt have risen sharply in the wake of the financial crisis. While these developments make fiscal consolidation inevitable, there is considerable uncertainty about the policy mix and timing of such budgetary adjustment. To evaluate the consequences of this increased uncertainty, the authors first estimate tax and spending processes for the U.S. that allow for time-varying volatility. They then feed these processes into an otherwise standard New ...
Working Paper
Computing DSGE models with recursive preferences and stochastic volatility
This paper compares different solution methods for computing the equilibrium of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with recursive preferences such as those in Epstein and Zin (1989 and 1991) and stochastic volatility. Models with these two features have recently become popular, but we know little about the best ways to implement them numerically. To fill this gap, we solve the stochastic neoclassical growth model with recursive preferences and stochastic volatility using four different approaches: second- and third-order perturbation, Chebyshev polynomials, and value ...
Working Paper
Estimating Hysteresis Effects
In this paper, we identify demand shocks that can have a permanent effect on output through hysteresis effects. We call these shocks permanent demand shocks. They are found to be quantitatively important in the United States, in particular when the sample includes the Great Recession. Recessions driven by permanent demand shocks lead to a permanent decline in employment and investment, although output per worker is largely unaffected. We find strong evidence that hysteresis transmits through a rise in long-term unemployment and a decline in labor force participation and disproportionately ...
Working Paper
Nonlinear adventures at the zero lower bound
Motivated by the recent experience of the U.S. and the Eurozone, the authors describe the quantitative properties of a New Keynesian model with a zero lower bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates, explicitly accounting for the nonlinearities that the bound brings. Besides showing how such a model can be efficiently computed, the authors found that the behavior of the economy is substantially affected by the presence of the ZLB. In particular, the authors document 1) the unconditional and conditional probabilities of hitting the ZLB; 2) the unconditional and conditional probabilty distributions ...
Working Paper
Nominal versus real wage rigidities: A Bayesian approach
This paper explores the capability of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with staggered price setting and real wage rigidities to fit the data with reasonable average durations of price and wage contracts. The authors implement a Bayesian approach for parameter estimation and for model comparison with other models that only incorporate nominal rigidities. Their main results can be summarized as follows: First, the authors find that, on average, prices are fixed for three quarters, nominal wages are fixed for five quarters, and half of the wage setters follow a real wage indexing ...
Working Paper
Uniform Priors for Impulse Responses
There has been a call for caution when using the conventional method for Bayesian inference in set-identified structural vector autoregressions on the grounds that the uniform prior over the set of orthogonal matrices could be nonuniform for individual impulse responses or other quantity of interest. This paper challenges this call by formally showing that, when the focus is on joint inference, the uniform prior over the set of orthogonal matrices is not only sufficient but also necessary for inference based on a uniform joint prior distribution over the identified set for the vector of ...
Working Paper
Inference in Bayesian Proxy-SVARs
Motivated by the increasing use of external instruments to identify structural vector autoregressions (SVARs), we develop an algorithm for exact finite sample inference in this class of time series models, commonly known as Proxy-SVARs. Our algorithm makes independent draws from any posterior distribution over the structural parameterization of a Proxy-SVAR. Our approach allows researchers to simultaneously use proxies and traditional zero and sign restrictions to identify structural shocks. We illustrate our methods with two applications. In particular, we show how to generalize the ...
Working Paper
Supply-side policies and the zero lower bound
This paper examines how supply-side policies may play a role in fighting a low aggregate demand that traps an economy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) of nominal interest rates. Future increases in productivity or reductions in mark-ups triggered by supply-side policies generate a wealth effect that pulls current consumption and output up. Since the economy is at the ZLB, increases in the interest rates do not undo this wealth effect, as we will have in the case outside the ZLB. The authors illustrate this mechanism with a simple two-period New Keynesian model. They discuss possible objections ...
Working Paper
Cointegrated TFP processes and international business cycles
A puzzle in international macroeconomics is that observed real exchange rates are highly volatile. Standard international real business cycle (IRBC) models cannot reproduce this fact. We show that total factor productivity processes for the United States and the rest of the world are characterized by a vector error correction model (VECM) and that adding cointegrated technology shocks to the standard IRBC model helps explaining the observed high real exchange rate volatility. Also, we show that the observed increase of the real exchange rate volatility with respect to output in the past ...