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Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2020-08-13)
We use an analytically tractable model to show that the Ramsey planner's decisions to finance stochastic public expenditures under uninsurable idiosyncratic risk implies a departure from tax smoothing. In the absence of state-contingent bonds the government's attempt to balance the competing incentives between tax smoothing and individual consumption smoothing---even at the cost of extra tax distortion---implies a bounded stochastic unit root component in optimal taxes. Nonetheless, a sufficiently high average level of public debt to support individuals’ self-insurance position is welfare ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-038

Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2023-02-06)
In infinite horizon, heterogeneous-agent and incomplete-market models, the existence of an interior Ramsey steady state is often assumed instead of proven. This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state assumed by Aiyagari (1995) does not exist in the standard Aiyagari model. Specifically, a steady state featuring the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to unveil the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-009

Working Paper
Production and inventory behavior of capital
Wen, Yi (2005)
This paper provides a dynamic optimization model of durable good inventories to study the interactions between investment demand and production of capital goods. There are three major findings: First, capital suppliers' inventory behavior makes investment demand more volatile in equilibrium; Second, equilibrium price of capital is characterized by downward stickiness; Third, the responses of the capital market to interest rate and other environmental changes are asymmetric. All are the results of equilibrium interactions between demand and supply.
Working Papers , Paper 2005-044

Working Paper
Dissecting Taylor rules in a structural VAR
Wen, Yi; Choi, Woon Gyu (2010)
This paper uncovers Taylor rules from estimated monetary policy reactions using a structural VAR on U.S. data from 1959 to 2009. These Taylor rules reveal the dynamic nature of policy responses to different structural shocks. We find that U.S. monetary policy has been far more responsive over time to demand shocks than to supply shocks, and more aggressive toward inflation than output growth. Our estimated dynamic policy coefficients characterize the style of policy as a "bang-bang" control for the pre-1979 period and as a gradual control for the post 1979 period.
Working Papers , Paper 2010-005

Working Paper
Financial development and long-run volatility trends
Xu, Zhiwei; Wen, Yi; Wang, Pengfei (2013)
Countries with more developed financial markets tend to have significantly lower aggregate volatility. This relationship is also highly non-linear starting from a low level of financial development the reduction in aggregate volatility is far more significant with respect to financial deepening than when the financial market is more developed. We build a fully-edged heterogeneous-agent model with an endogenous financial market of private credit and debt to rationalize these stylized facts. We show how financial development that promotes better credit allocations under more relaxed borrowing ...
Working Papers , Paper 2013-003

Working Paper
Are Unconditional Lump-sum Transfers a Good Idea?
Wen, Yi; Chen, Yunmin; Chien, YiLi; Yang, C. C. (2021-06-14)
The role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in improving social welfare in heterogenous agent models has not been thoroughly understood in the literature. We adopt an analytically tractable Aiyagari-type model to study the distinctive role of unconditional lump-sum transfers in reducing consumption inequality due to ex-post uninsurable income risk. Our results show that in the presence of ex-post heterogeneity and in the absence of wealth inequality, unconditional lump-sum transfers are not a desirable tool for reducing consumption inequality—the Ramsey planner opts to rely solely on ...
Working Papers , Paper 2021-002

Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2020-06-10)
We use an analytically tractable model to show that the Ramsey planner's decisions to finance stochastic public expenditures under uninsurable idiosyncratic risk implies a departure from tax smoothing. In the absence of state-contingent bonds the government's attempt to balance the competing incentives between tax smoothing and individual consumption smoothing---even at the cost of extra tax distortion---implies a bounded stochastic unit root component in optimal taxes. Nonetheless, a sufficiently high average level of public debt to support individuals’ self-insurance position is welfare ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-038

Working Paper
The Ramsey Steady-State Conundrum in Heterogeneous-Agent Economies
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi (2024-05-29)
This paper makes two fundamental contributions: (i) We prove that the interior Ramsey steady state commonly assumed in the literature may not exist in a standard Aiyagari model-in particular, a steady state with the modified golden rule and a positive capital tax is shown to be feasible but not optimal. (ii) We design a modified, analytically tractable version of the standard Aiyagari model to reveal the necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the existence of a Ramsey steady state. We characterize the basic properties of both interior and non-interior Ramsey steady states and show that ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-009

Working Paper
Imperfect competition and sunspots
Wen, Yi; Wang, Pengfei (2006)
This paper shows that imperfect competition can be a rich source of sunspots equilibria and coordination failures. This is demonstrated in a dynamic general equilibrium model that has no major distortions except imperfect competition. In the absence of fundamental shocks, the model has a unique certainty (fundamental) equilibrium. But there is also a continuum of stochastic (sunspots) equilibria that are not mere randomizations over fundamental equilibria. Markup is always counter-cyclical in sunspots equilibria, which is consistent with empirical evidence. The paper provides a justification ...
Working Papers , Paper 2006-015

Journal Article
Income and Living Standards within the Eighth District
Wen, Yi; Reinbold, Brian (2018)
In this article, we have look at the distribution of living standards in terms of the purchasing power of real per capita personal income by county using RPPs. Adjusting income for cost of living allows us to evaluate inequality in income?s local purchasing power instead of income per se. We see that overall inequality is not so severe in the District once adjusted for the cost of living, both across counties and in comparison to the nation. We also see that living standards tend to be higher within MSAs than outside them. In general, inequality is less severe when measured by living ...
The Regional Economist , Volume 26 , Issue 1

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