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Working Paper
When is the government spending multiplier large?
We argue that the government spending multiplier can be very large when the nominal interest rate is constant. We focus on a natural case in which the interest rate is constant, which is when the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds. For the economies that we consider it is optimal to increase government spending in response to shocks that make the zero bound binding.
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
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
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
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
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
Trading down and the business cycle
The authors document two facts: First, during recessions consumers trade down in the quality of the goods and services they consume. Second, the production of low-quality goods is less labor intensive than that of high-quality goods. Therefore, when households trade down, labor demand falls, increasing the severity of recessions. The authors find that the trading-down phenomenon accounts for a substantial fraction of the fall in U.S. employment in the recent recession. They study two business cycle models that embed quality choice and find that the presence of quality choice magnifies the ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Affine term structure pricing with bond supply as factors
This paper presents a theoretical model for analyzing the effect of the maturity structure of government debt on the yield curve. It is an ATSM (affine term structure model) in which the factors for the yield curve include, in addition to the short rate, the government bond supply for each maturity. The supply shock is not restricted to be perfectly correlated across maturities. The effect on the yield curve of a bond supply shock that is local to a maturity is largest at the maturity. This hump-shaped response of the yield curve persists in spite of the absence of preferred-habitat investors.
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 ...