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Jel Classification:E13 

Working Paper
The Determination of Public Debt under both Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Uncertainty

We use an analytically tractable, heterogeneous-agent incomplete-markets model to show that the Ramsey planner’s decision to finance stochastic public expenditures implies a departure from tax smoothing and an endogeneous mean-reverting force to support positive debt growth despite the government’s precautionary saving motives. Specifically, the government’s attempt to balance the competing incentives between its own precautionary saving (tax smoothing) and households’ precautionary saving (individual consumption smoothing)—even at the cost of extra tax distortion—implies an ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-038

Working Paper
Time-Inconsistent Optimal Quantity of Debt

A key feature of the infinite-horizon heterogeneous-agents incomplete-markets (Inf-HAIM) framework is that the equilibrium interest rate of public debt lies below the time discount rate (regardless of capital). This happens because of a positive liquidity premium on asset returns due to imperfect risk sharing. This fundamental property of standard Inf-HAIM models, however, implies that the Ramsey planner's fiscal policy may be time-inconsistent---because the planner has a dominate incentive to issue plenty of debt such that all households are fully self-insured against idiosyncratic risk ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-037

Working Paper
Housing Choices and Their Implications for Consumption Heterogeneity

International Finance Discussion Papers , Paper 1249

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 Papers , Paper 2019-038

Report
Evolution of Modern Business Cycle Models: Accounting for the Great Recession

Modern business cycle theory focuses on the study of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models that generate aggregate fluctuations similar to those experienced by actual economies. We discuss how this theory has evolved from its roots in the early real business cycle models of the late 1970s through the turmoil of the Great Recession four decades later. We document the strikingly different pattern of comovements of macro aggregates during the Great Recession compared to other postwar recessions, especially the 1982 recession. We then show how two versions of the latest generation of real ...
Staff Report , Paper 566

Journal Article
Relative Income Traps

Despite economic growth in the post-World War II period, few developing countries have been able to catch up to the income levels in the United States or other advanced economies. Such countries remain trapped at a relative low- or middle-income level. In this article, the authors redefine the concept of income traps as situations in which income levels relative to the United States remain constantly low and with no clear sign of convergence. This approach allows them to study the issue of economic convergence (or lack of it) directly. The authors describe evidence pointing to the existence ...
Review , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , Pages 41-60

Working Paper
Fiscal Stimulus Under Average Inflation Targeting

The stimulus effects of expansionary fiscal policy under average inflation targeting (AIT) depends on both monetary and fiscal policy regimes. AIT features an inflation makeup under the monetary regime, but not under the fiscal regime. In normal times, AIT amplifies the short-run fiscal multipliers under both regimes while mitigating the cumulative multipliers. due to intertemporal substitution. In a zero-lower bound (ZLB) period, AIT reduces fiscal multipliers under a monetary regime by shortening the duration of the ZLB through expected inflation makeup. Under the fiscal regime, AIT has a ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2022-22

Working Paper
Growth Effects of Progressive Taxation

Criticisms of endogenous growth models with flat rate taxes have highlighted two features that are not substantiated by the data. These models generally imply: (1) that economic growth must fall with the share of government expenditures in output across countries, and (2) that one-time shifts in marginal tax rates should instantaneously lead to similar shifts in output growth. In contrast, we show that allowing for heterogenous households and progressive taxes into otherwise conventional linear growth models radically changes these predictions. In particular, economic growth does not have to ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2002-03

Working Paper
Fertility Shocks and Equilibrium Marriage-Rate Dynamics

Why did the marriage probability of single females in France after World War 1 rise 50% above its pre-war average, despite a 33% drop in the male/female singles ratio? We conjecture that war-time disruption of the marriage market generated an abnormal abundance of men with relatively high marriage propensities. Our model of matching over the lifecycle, when calibrated to pre-war data and two war-time shocks, succeeds in matching the French time path under the additional assumption of a pro-natalist post-war preference shock. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially ...
Working Papers , Paper 2015-7

Working Paper
Optimal Dynamic Tax-Transfer Policies in Heterogeneous-Agents Economies

When designing an optimal tax-transfer system, the existing literature identifies two key factors: labor efficiency and debt efficiency. The labor-efficiency approach emphasizes the trade-off between redistribution and distortion in the labor market, while the debt-efficiency approach emphasizes the trade-off between monopoly rent gains and distortion in the asset market. In this paper, we propose a third factor for designing optimal tax-transfer policies: the dynamic-efficiency approach. To demonstrate this, we use an analytically tractable infinite-horizon model incorporating both ex-ante ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-009

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Wen, Yi 34 items

Chien, YiLi 31 items

Greenwood, Jeremy 12 items

Vandenbroucke, Guillaume 11 items

Hejkal, John P. 10 items

Ravikumar, B. 10 items

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