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Working Paper
Liquidity needs in economies with interconnected financial obligations
A model is developed in which firms in a financial system have to settle their debts to each other by using a liquid asset (or money). The question studied is how many firms must have access to this asset from outside the financial system to make sure that all debts within the system are settled. The main result is that these liquidity needs are larger when these firms are more interconnected through their debts, that is, when they borrow from and lend to more firms. Two pecuniary externalities are discussed. One is the result of paying one creditor first rather than another. The second ...
Working Paper
Monetary policy and stock market booms
Historical data and model simulations support the following conclusion: Inflation is low during stock market booms, so an interest rate rule that is too narrowly focused on inflation destabilizes asset markets and the broader economy. Adjustments to the interest rate rule can remove this source of welfare-reducing instability. For example, allowing an independent role for credit growth (beyond its role in constructing the inflation forecast) would reduce the volatility of output and asset prices.
Working Paper
Comment on Eggertsson, \"What fiscal policy is effective at zero interest rates?\"
Gauti B. Eggertsson's paper (published in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010) represents an important contribution to the analysis of fiscal policy in the New Keynesian model when the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate is binding. The paper accomplishes a great deal. It analyzes two types of taxes on capital and labor, the investment tax credit, a sales tax, and two types of government spending. It deserves to be an important reference on fiscal policy in a binding zero lower bound. In my discussion, I focus on the subset of Eggertsson's results that initially surprised me and that I ...
Working Paper
DSGE models for monetary policy analysis
Monetary DSGE models are widely used because they fit the data well and can be used to address important monetary policy questions. We provide a selective review of these developments. Policy analysis with DSGE models requires using data to assign numerical values to model parameters. The paper describes and implements Bayesian moment matching and impulse response matching procedures for this purpose.
Working Paper
Introducing financial frictions and unemployment into a small open economy model
The current financial crisis has made it abundantly clear that business cycle modeling can no longer abstract from financial factors. It is also clear that the current standard approach of modeling labor markets without explicit unemployment has its limitations. We extend what is becoming the standard new Keynesian model in three dimensions. First, we incorporate financial frictions in the accumulation and management of capital. Second, we model the labor market using a search and matching framework. Third, we extend the model into a small open economy setting. Finally, we estimate the model ...
Working Paper
Microfoundations of inflation persistence in the New Keynesian Phillips curve
This paper proposes a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that endogenously generates inflation persistence. We assume that although firms change prices periodically, they face convex costs that preclude optimal adjustment. In essence, the model assumes that price stickiness arises from both the frequency and size of price adjustments. The model is estimated using Bayesian techniques, and the results strongly support both sources of price stickiness in the U.S. data. In contrast with traditional sticky price models, the framework yields inflation inertia, a delayed effect of monetary ...
Working Paper
Involuntary unemployment and the business cycle
We propose a monetary model in which the unemployed satisfy the official U.S. definition of unemployment: people without jobs who are (1) currently making concrete efforts to find work and (2) willing and able to work. In addition, our model has the property that people searching for jobs are better off if they find a job than if they do not (that is, unemployment is involuntary). We integrate our model of involuntary unemployment into the simple new Keynesian framework with no capital and use the resulting model to discuss the concept of the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment. We ...
Working Paper
Non-linear effects of taxation on growth
We study a model in which the effects of taxation on growth are highly non-linear. Marginal increases in tax rates have a small growth impact when tax rates are low or moderate. When tax rates are high, further tax hikes have a large, negative impact on growth performance. We argue that this non-linearity is consistent with the empirical evidence on the effect of taxation and other disincentives to investment and innovation on economic growth.
Working Paper
Taxes, transfers, and employment in an incomplete markets model
Tax and transfer programs are analyzed in the context of a model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks and incomplete markets. The effects are contrasted with those obtained in a stand-in household model featuring no idiosyncratic shocks and complete markets. The main finding is that the impact on hours remains very large, but the welfare consequences are very different. The analysis also suggests that tax and transfer policies have large effects on average labor productivity via selection effects on employment.
Working Paper
A model of the Twin Ds: optimal default and devaluation
This paper characterizes jointly optimal default and exchange-rate policy in a small open economy with limited enforcement of debt contracts and downward nominal wage rigidity. Under optimal policy, default occurs during contractions and is accompanied by large devaluations. The latter inflate away real wages, thereby avoiding massive unemployment. Thus, the Twin Ds phenomenon emerges endogenously as the optimal outcome. In contrast, under fixed exchange rates, optimal default takes place in the context of large involuntary unemployment. Fixed-exchange-rate economies are shown to have ...