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Journal Article
The Real Term Premium in a Stationary Economy with Segmented Asset Markets
This article proposes a general equilibrium model to explain the positive and sizable term premia implied by the data. The authors introduce a slow mean-reverting process of consumption growth and a segmented asset-market mechanism with heterogeneous trading technologies into an otherwise standard heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model. First, the slow mean-reverting consumption growth process implies that the expected consumption growth rate is only slightly countercyclical and the process can exhibit near-zero first-order autocorrelation, as observed in the data. This slight ...
Working Paper
Optimal Fiscal Policies under Market Failures
The aggregate capital stock in a nation can be overaccumulated for many different reasons. This paper studies which policy or policy mix is more effective in achieving the socially optimal (modified golden rule) level of aggregate capital stock in an infinite-horizon heterogeneous-agents incomplete-markets economy where capital may be over-accumulated for two distinct reasons: (i) precautionary savings and (ii) production externalities. By solving the Ramsey problem analytically along the entire transitional path, we show that public debt and capital taxation play very distinct roles in ...
Working Paper
Don’t Tax Capital — Optimal Ramsey Taxation in Heterogeneous Agent Economies with Quasi-Linear Preferences
We build a tractable heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model with quasi-linear preferences to address a set of long-standing issues in the optimal Ramsey taxation literature. The tractability of our model enables us to analytically prove the existence of a Ramsey steady state and establish several novel results: (i) In the absence of any redistributional effects of capital taxation or lump-sum transfers, the optimal capital tax is exclusively zero in a Ramsey steady state regardless of the modified golden rule (MGR) and government debt limits. (ii) Whether the MGR holds or not depends ...
Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty
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 Paper
Convergence to Rational Expectations in Learning Models: A Note of Caution
This paper illustrates a challenge in analyzing the learning algorithms resulting in second-order difference equations. We show in a simple monetary model that the learning dynamics do not converge to the rational expectations monetary steady state. We then show that to guarantee convergence, the gain parameter used in the learning rule has to be restricted based on economic fundamentals in the monetary model.
Working Paper
Are Government Bonds Net Wealth or a Liability? ---Optimal Debt and Taxes in an OLG Model with Uninsurable Income Risk
A positive national debt is often rationalized either by the assumption of dynamic inefficiency in an overlapping-generations (OLG) model, or by the hypothesis of heterogeneous-agents and incomplete-markets (HAIM) in an infinite horizon model. Both assumptions imply insufficient private liquidity to support private saving and investment, thus calling for a positive level of public debt to improve social welfare. However, since public debt is financed often by distortionary future taxes, optimal debt and tax policies ought to be studied jointly in a single framework. In this paper we use a ...
Journal Article
Lagging Long-Term Wage Growth
The long-run trend of average wages has consistently failed to keep pace with overall economic growth.
Working Paper
Are Government Bonds Net Wealth or a Liability? ---Optimal Debt and Taxes in an OLG Model with Uninsurable Income Risk
A positive national debt is often rationalized either by the assumption of dynamic inefficiency in an overlapping-generations (OLG) model, or by the hypothesis of heterogeneous-agents and incomplete-markets (HAIM) in an infinite horizon model. Both assumptions imply insufficient private liquidity to support private saving and investment, thus calling for a positive level of public debt to improve social welfare. However, since public debt is financed often by distortionary future taxes, optimal debt and tax policies ought to be studied jointly in a single framework. In this paper we use a ...
Working Paper
Are Government Bonds Net Wealth or a Liability? ---Optimal Debt and Taxes in an OLG Model with Uninsurable Income Risk
The rapidly growing national debt in the U.S. since the 1970s has alarmed and intrigued the academic world. Consequently, the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping generations (OLG) world and the importance of the heterogeneous-agents and incomplete markets (HAIM) hypothesis to justify a high debt-to-GDP ratio have been extensively studied. Two important consensus emerge from this literature: (i) The optimal quantity of public debt is positive—due to insufficient private liquidity to support private saving and investment (see, e.g., Barro (1974), Woodford (1990), and Aiyagari ...
Journal Article
The Rising Federal Funds Rate in the Current Low Long-Term Interest Rate Environment
The low long-term yield is likely a result of high foreign demand for Treasuries rather than a near-zero federal funds rate.