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Working Paper
The output, employment, and interest rate effects of government consumption
This paper investigates the impact on aggregate variables of changes in government consumption in the context of a stochastic, neoclassical growth model. We show, theoretically, that the impact on output and employment of a persistent change in government consumption exceeds that of temporary change. We also show that, in principle, there can be an analog to the Keynesian multiplier in the neoclassical growth model. Finally, in an empirically plausible version of the model, we show that the interest rate impact of a persistent government consumption shock exceeds that of a temporary one. Our ...
Working Paper
Interpreting monetary stabilization in a growth model with credit goods production
This paper is motivated by observations concerning the size of the banking sector and the growth rate of the economy before and after successful stabilizations of high inflations. The facts suggest that the relative size of the banking sector increases during a period of accelerating inflation and decreases immediately following a successful monetary stabilization. Furthermore, the GDP growth rate is lower during the high inflation period than after stabilization. The goal of this paper is to develop a monetary growth model which is qualitatively consistent with these observations. The model ...
Working Paper
Transaction services, inflation, and welfare
This paper is motivated by a variety of empirical observations on the comovements of currency velocity, inflation, and the relative size of the "credit services" sector. By the credit services sector we mean the part of banking and credit sector which provides alternative means of transactions to using currency as well as other services which help people economize on currency. We incorporate the credit services sector into a monetary growth model. Our model makes two specific and new contributions. The first is to show that direct quantitative evidence on the welfare cost of low inflation ...
Journal Article
Deficits, interest rates, and the tax distribution
Working Paper
Walras' Law and nonoptimal equilibria in overlapping generations models
This paper demonstrates a connection between failure of Walras? Law and nonoptimal equilibria in a quite general overlapping generations model. Consider the following implication of Walras? Law in finite economies. Suppose that all prices are positive and that all agents are on their budget lines. Then, no matter how the set of goods is partitioned, there cannot be an excess supply (in value terms) for some other set in the partition with excess demand (in value terms) for some other set in the partition. We use the Cass (1972), Benveniste (1976, 1986), Balasko and Shell (1980), and Okuno and ...
Report
The optimum quantity of debt
We find that the welfare gains to being at the optimum quantity of debt rather than the current U.S. level are small, and, therefore, concerns regarding the high level of debt in the U.S. economy may be misplaced. This finding is based on a model of a large number of infinitely-lived households whose saving behavior is influenced by precautionary saving motives and borrowing constraints. This model incorporates a different role for government debt than is found in standard models, and it captures different cost-benefit trade-offs. On the benefit side, government debt enhances the liquidity of ...
Report
Comments on Farmer and Guo's \\"the econometrics of indeterminacy: an applied study.\\"
I argue that Farmer and Guo's one-sector real business cycle model with indeterminacy and sunspots fails empirically and that its failure is inherent in the logic of the model taken together with some simple labor market facts.
Working Paper
Money and dynamic credit arrangements with private information
The authors construct a model with private information in which consumers write dynamic contracts with financial intermediaries.
Journal Article
Explaining financial market facts: the importance of incomplete markets and transaction costs
In this article, I suggest that incomplete markets and transaction costs are crucial for explaining the high equity premium and the low risk-free rate. I first demonstrate the failure of the complete frictionless markets model in explaining these return puzzles and then show how introducing incomplete markets and transaction costs can lead to success. Additionally, I explain how these features lead to predictions concerning individual consumptions, wealths, portfolios, and asset market transactions that are in better agreement with the facts than the predictions of the complete frictionless ...
Working Paper
Coexistence of money and interest-bearing securities
A random matching model with money is used to study the nominal yield on small denomination, bearer, safe, discount securities issued by the government. There is always one steady state with matured securities circulating at par and, for some parameters, another with them circulating at a discount. In the former, a necessary and sufficient condition for a positive nominal yield on not-yet-matured securities is exogenous discriminatory treatment of them by the government. In the latter, the post-maturity discount on securities induces a deeper pre-maturity discount even without such ...