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Working Paper
Information costs, networks and intermediation in international trade
This paper is motivated by the observation that intermediaries play an important role in international trade. The matching role of intermediaries is examined in a pairwise matching model with two-sided information asymmetry, where intermediaries develop contacts. Intermediation expands the set of matching technologies available to traders, while convexity in network-building costs with respect to network size gives rise to both direct and indirect trade in equilibrium. The trade pattern depends on the relative responsiveness of the direct and indirect matching technologies to information ...
Working Paper
Does state-dependent pricing imply coordination failure?
The analysis in Ball and Romer [1991] suggests that models with fixed costs of changing price may be rife with multiple equilibria; in their static model price adjustment is always characterized by strategic complementarity, a necessary condition for multiplicity. We extend Ball and Romer's analysis to a dynamic setting. In steady states of the dynamic model, we find only weak complementarity and no evidence of multiplicity, although nonexistence of symmetric steady state with pure strategies does arise in a small number of cases.
Working Paper
The dynamics of economics functions: modelling and forecasting the yield curve
The class of Functional Signal plus Noise (FSN) models is introduced that provides a new, general method for modelling and forecasting time series of economic functions. The underlying, continuous economic function (or "signal") is a natural cubic spline whose dynamic evolution is driven by a cointegrated vector autoregression for the ordinates (or "y-values") at the knots of the spline. The natural cubic spline provides flexible cross-sectional fit and results in a linear, state space model. This FSN model achieves dimension reduction, provides a coherent description of the observed ...
Working Paper
The delayed response to a technology shock: a flexible price explanation
I present empirical evidence of how the U.S. economy, including per-capita hours worked, responds to a technology shock. In particular, I present results based on permanent changes to a constructed direct measure of technological change for U.S. manufacturing industries. Based on empirical evidence, some claim that hours worked declines and never recovers in response to a positive technology shock. This paper's empirical evidence suggests that emphasizing the drop in hours worked is misdirected. Because the sharp drop in hours is not present here, the emphasis rather should be on the small ...
Working Paper
Globalization and monetary policy: an introduction
Greater openness has become an almost universal feature of modern, developed economies. This paper develops a workhorse international model, and explores the role of standard monetary policy rules applied to an open economy. For this purpose, I build a two-country DSGE model with monopolistic competition, sticky prices, and pricing-to-market. I also derive the steady state and a log-linear approximation of the equilibrium conditions. The paper provides a lengthy explanation of the steps required to derive this benchmark model, and a discussion of: (a) how to account for certain well-known ...