The European sovereign debt crisis has revived the debate about appropriate fiscal rules in the European Economic and Monetary Union. Whereas the Stability and Growth Pact and the Fiscal Compact make no distinction between public consumption and investment expenditure, the aim of the current paper is to analyze the implications of the adoption of the Golden rule in a monetary union, distinguishing between the two types of public expenditure. With the help of a macroeconomic model, we show that introducing a Golden rule and smoothing public investment expenditure would be welfare-improving, and mostly for countries where taxation rates and the productivity of public investment are highest, and for the most closed countries. It would also be the most beneficial for countries where the monetary transmission parameter, the propensity to consume, and the price elasticity of supply are weakest, whereas supply-side distortions are the strongest.

We investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks in the new European Union (EU) member states the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. In contrast to existing studies, we explicitly account for external developments in European Monetary Union (EMU) countries and in other acceding countries. We do so by using factor-augmented vector autoregressive models that employ information from nonstationary factor time series. One set of VAR models includes factors obtained from a large cross section of time series from EMU countries, whereas another set includes factors obtained from other acceding countries. We find that including EMU factors does change impulse response patterns in some but not all acceding countries. In contrast, including factors from other acceding countries leads to substantial changes in impulse responses and to economically more plausible results. Overall, our analysis highlights that taking external economic developments properly into account is crucial for the analysis of monetary policy in the new EU member states.

A nonlinear programming formulation is introduced to solve infinite-horizon dynamic programming problems. This extends the linear approach to dynamic programming by using ideas from approximation theory to approximate value functions. Our numerical results show that this nonlinear programming is efficient and accurate, and avoids inefficient discretization.

According to empirical studies, the life cycle of labor supply volatility exhibits a U-shaped pattern. This may lead to the conclusion that demographic change induces a drop in output volatility. We present an overlapping-generations model that replicates the empirically observed pattern and study the impact of demographic transition on output volatility. We find that the change in age composition itself has only a marginal influence on output volatility, as the mitigating effect of more individuals with lower labor supply volatilities is compensated for by higher age-specific labor shares. Instead, the driving force behind the Great Moderation in our model is the downward shift of the age-specific labor supply volatility curve.

We estimate the effects of anticipated and unanticipated monetary policy changes on jump variation by employing high-frequency nonparametric jump detection methods. We find that anticipated changes in the Fed funds have no significant effect on jumps. In contrast, jump variation in the price of financial market data increases with monetary policy surprises. We document evidence of asymmetries in the response of jumps to monetary policy changes. Monetary policy surprises and positive changes in the Fed target rate induce increments in jumps. Similar results exist in the sector analysis. In addition, this study uncovers no evidence of endogenous response between jumps and monetary policy surprises.

This study proposes the unified framework of a three-sector model with structural change where agriculture, manufacturing, and service sectors have different production technologies. All three sectors use the factors of capital, labor, and land as inputs. The constant-growth path (CGP), which is the trajectory along which the rental rate of capital remains constant, is used to reconcile the Kaldor and Kuznets facts, and plays a role in linking the wage rate and land rent in the three-factors model. Because the prices of agricultural goods and services are determined endogenously, the CGP condition is no longer the knife-edge condition. We find that the dynamic system along the CGP in the three-sector, three-factor model corresponds to the standard two-sector optimal growth model.

This paper investigates the nonlinear dynamics of the inflation–output type of Phillips curve based on a multiple-regime smooth transition regression model using data from China. The empirical results indicate significant nonlinearities in China's Phillips curve. The relationship between inflation and output can be modeled by a four-regime smooth transition regression model in which the responses of inflation to output depend on both inflation and economic growth rates. The inflation–output type Phillips curve may be positively sloped, negatively sloped, or even vertical in the short term, depending on different business cycles. Furthermore, we analyze business cycle fluctuations based on the nonlinear Phillips curve, indicating a coexisting zone of stable inflation rate and rapid growth rate.

In this paper I study the impact of increasing longevity on pay-as-you-go pension systems. First, I show that increasing longevity increases the internal rate of return. The size of the effect differs for different policy regimes. It is higher for the case where the retirement age is increased to keep the system in balance than for the case where the necessary adjustment is achieved by reducing pension benefits. Second, I study optimally chosen retirement decisions and I show that the socially optimal policy involves a shorter working life than the private optimum. The social optimum can be implemented by the use of a PAYG system that combines an actuarial and a flat pension.

Although a realistic characterization of the production function is critical to macroeconomic analysis, estimating the function's characteristics is hampered by both data limitations and methodological difficulties. In this paper, I develop a new empirical strategy for estimating the CES production function with biased technical change. The proposed method extends the control function approach to the CES specification to address endogeneity concerns and is able to retrieve sector-specific and time-varying estimates of technical change. Using data from U.S. manufacturing industries, I find evidence that (i) the production technology exhibits nonincreasing returns to scale, (ii) the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is below unity, and (iii) technical change is generally labor-augmenting along the balanced growth path.

In previous papers [Spear and Young (2014, 2015)], we surveyed the origins, evolution, and dissemination of optimal growth, two-sector and turnpike models up to the early 1970s. Regarding subsequent developments in growth theory, a number of prominent observers, such as Fischer (1988), Stern (1991), and McCallum (1996), maintained that after significant progress in the 1950s and 1960s, economic growth theory “received relatively little attention for almost two decades” [Fischer (1988, p. 329)], and that “by the late 1960s early 1970s, research on the theory of growth more or less stopped” [Stern (1991, p. 259)]. Stern went on to say “the latter half of the 1980s saw a rekindling of growth theory, particularly in the work of Romer . . . and Lucas” (1991, p. 259), that is to say, in the form of “endogenous growth” models. McCallum, for his part, wrote (1996, p. 41), “After a long period of quiescence, growth economics has in the last decade (1986–1995) become an extremely active area of research.” Moreover, Brock and Mirman's (1972b) paper was the sole “extension” of Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans to a “stochastic environment” mentioned by McCallum (1996, 49).

A counterexample to the notion that money is memory is provided—one that relies on incomplete information. There exists an implementable allocation for it with money that is not implementable with memory. The result arises because money conveys only a limited amount of information about past actions, which can be beneficial in settings with incomplete information.