Search Results
Working Paper
Business Cycle Fluctuations in Mirrlees Economies: The Case of i.i.d. Shocks
I consider a real business cycle model in which agents have private information about the i.i.d. realizations of their value of leisure. For the case of logarithmic preferences I provide an analytical characterization of the solution to the associated mechanism design problem. Moreover, I show a striking irrelevance result: That the stationary behavior of all aggregate variables are exactly the same in the private information economy as in the full information case. Numerical simulations indicate that the irrelevance result approximately holds for more general CRRA preferences.
Journal Article
Preannounced tax cuts and their potential influence on the 2001 recession
The authors present a model in which anticipated future tax cuts, like those promised during the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, generate a contraction in economic activity with some of the atypical features observed during the 2001 recession (such as its relatively strong consumption and home investment).
Working Paper
Employment flows, capital mobility, and policy analysis
This paper extends Hopenhayn and Rogerson's analysis of firing taxes by introducing a flexible form of capital and considering transitionary dynamics. The paper finds that capital is not important for understanding the long run and welfare effects of firing taxes. However, capital is crucial for determining the short run consequences of eliminating this type of policy.
Working Paper
Business Cycle Fluctuations in Mirrlees Economies: The case of i.i.d. shocks
I consider a real business cycle model in which agents have private information about the i.i.d. realizations of their value of leisure. For the case of logarithmic preferences I provide an analytical characterization of the solution to the associated mechanism design problem. Moreover, I show a striking irrelevance result: That the stationary behavior of all aggregate variables are exactly the same in the private information economy as in the full information case. Numerical simulations indicate that the irrelevance result approximately holds for more general CRRA preferences.
Discussion Paper
Plant level irreversible investment and equilibrium business cycles
This paper studies a version of the neoclassical growth model where heterogeneous establishments are subject to partial irreversibilities in investment. Under such investment technology, the optimal decision rules of establishments are of the (S,s) variety. A novel contribution of the paper is the analysis of the general equilibrium dynamics arising from aggregate productivity shocks. This is a difficult task given the high dimensionality of the state vector, which includes the distribution of establishments across capital levels and idiosyncratic shocks. The paper overcomes this difficulty ...
Journal Article
A Simple Model of Gross Worker Flows across Labor Market States
The author develops a simple model of the gross flows of workers across labor market states that is based on Krusell et al. (2012). Its simplicity allows for analytical derivations that make the determination of these flows transparent. Moreover, he finds that if errors in the classification of agents? labor market states are introduced and allowed to vary over time, the model has the ability to generate business cycle dynamics similar to those observed in the U.S. data. However, its dynamics are driven essentially by exogenous factors, not endogenous ones.
Journal Article
A Monetarist View of the Fed’s Balance Sheet Normalization Period
The Federal Reserve currently holds over $4 trillion in fixed-income assets. However, since the fall of 2017 the Fed has been in a ?balance sheet normalization period,? during which the size of its balance sheet is gradually shrinking over time. In particular, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been instructing the Federal Reserve trading desk to reduce its security holdings by reinvesting principal payments only to the extent that these payments exceed gradually raising caps. These caps on redemptions will be maintained until the Fed considers that its balance sheet has reached a ...
Working Paper
Firing costs and business cycle fluctuations
This paper evaluates to what extent the introduction of firing costs can affect the aggregate dynamics of a neoclassical growth model with heterogeneous establishments. Similarly to the previous literature, firing costs are found to have large steady-state effects. However, they have no important effects on business cycle dynamics: Aggregate employment fluctuations are somewhat smaller when the firing costs are introduced, but most of the effects turn out to be insignificant.
Working Paper
Fixed term employment contracts in an equilibrium search model
Fixed term employment contracts have been introduced in number of European countries as a way to provide flexibility to economies with high employment protection levels. We introduce these contracts into the equilibrium search model in Alvarez and Veracierto (1999), a version of the Lucas and Prescott island model, adapted to have undirected search and variable labor force participation. We model a contract of length J as a tax on separations of workers with tenure higher than J. We show a version of the welfare theorems, and characterize the efficient allocations. This requires solving a ...
Working Paper
Establishments dynamics, vacancies and unemployment: a neoclassical synthesis
This paper develops a Walrasian equilibrium theory of establishment dynamics and matching frictions and uses it to analyze business cycle fluctuations. Two scenarios are considered: one in which the matching process is subject to congestion externalities and another in which it is not. The paper finds that the scenario with congestion externalities replicates U.S. business cycle dynamics much better than the scenario with efficient matching. Reallocation shocks improve the empirical behavior of the model in terms of microeconomic adjustments but have little consequences for aggregate dynamics.