We estimate a medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the euro area in an open-economy framework. The model includes structural trends on all variables, allowing us to estimate on gross data. First, we provide a theoretical balanced growth path consistent with permanent productivity shocks, inflation target changes, and permanent shocks to the openness of the economies. We then define the cycle as the gap between this sustainable trajectory and the gross data. Hence, we can properly deal with persistent deviations of the trade balance. Finally, we find persistent and strong effects from the asymmetric increase of euro-area imports during the last 10 years on domestic inflation. From 2000Q1 to 2008Q4, we estimate the contribution of the imbalanced development of international trade on euro-area inflation to an average of −0.7%, and on nominal interest rate, to an average of −1.4%.

This paper shows that global indeterminacy may characterize the three-dimensional vector field implied by the Lucas [(1988) Journal of Monetary Economics 22, 3–42] endogenous growth model. To achieve this result, we demonstrate the emergence of a family of homoclinic orbits connecting the steady state to itself in backward and forward time, when the stable and unstable manifolds are locally governed by real eigenvalues. In this situation, we prove that if the saddle quantity is negative, and other genericity conditions are fulfilled, a stable limit cycle bifurcates from the homoclinic orbit. Orbits originating in a tubular neighborhood of the homoclinic orbit are then bound to converge to this limit cycle, creating the conditions for the onset of global indeterminacy. Some economic intuitions related to this phenomenon are finally explored.

This article proposes a unified framework for solving and estimating linear rational expectations models with a variety of frequency-domain techniques, some established, some new. The solution methodology is applicable to a wide class of models and leads to straightforward construction of the spectral density for performing likelihood-based inference. We also generalize the well-known spectral decomposition of the Gaussian likelihood function to a composite version implied by several competing models. Taken together, these techniques yield fresh insights into the model’s theoretical and empirical implications beyond conventional time-domain approaches can offer. We illustrate the proposed framework using a prototypical new Keynesian model with fiscal details and two determinate monetary–fiscal policy regimes. The model is simple enough to deliver an analytical solution that makes the policy effects transparent under each regime, yet still able to shed light on the empirical interactions between US monetary and fiscal policies along different frequencies.

I examine whether an RBC model can generate a higher volatility of consumption relative to output, a strong negative correlation between output and the trade balance, and a weak countercyclicality of the real interest rate, phenomena that have been observed in the business cycles of emerging economies, including Korea. From an RBC model with recursive utility, I show that it is not the degree of relative risk aversion, but the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS), that governs the movements of the variables of the model in the log linearized environment. The Bayesian estimation results based on Korean data from the period 1987 to 2013 suggest that there are some elements of success in describing the Korean economy based on the simple RBC model both with the EIS larger than one and with an error term for the real interest rate equation. An EIS larger than one improves the performance of the simple RBC model mainly in the direction of raising the volatility of consumption relative to output. Simulation results show that the error term for the real interest rate process mostly reflects the endogenous channel of financial frictions where the domestic real interest rate depends negatively on the expected (transitory) productivity shock.

Building on the time-varying-coefficient (TVC) model, we propose a generalization of the concept of cointegration, allowing for the possibility that a set of variables measured with error entails a nonlinear relationship with unknown functional form. Both the dependent and explanatory variables of this relationship may be nonstationary (not necessarily of unit-root type), but there exists a nonlinear combination of all these explanatory variables that completely explains all the variation in the dependent variable. The TVC model allows us to test for the presence of this generalized cointegration in the absence of knowledge of the true nonlinear functional form and the full set of explanatory variables. We present the basic stages of the technique and discuss in detail how the issues of nonstationarity and cointegration affect each stage of the TVC estimation procedure.

This paper uses a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a two-sector small open economy to analyze how the Maastricht criteria modify a fully credible optimal monetary policy in the Economic and Monetary Union accession countries. We show that if the country is not constrained by the criteria, optimal policy should stabilize fluctuations in PPI inflation, in the aggregate output gap, and in the domestic and international terms of trade. The optimal policy constrained permanently by the Maastricht criteria is characterized by reduced variability of the nominal exchange rate, CPI inflation, and the nominal interest rate and by lower optimal targets for CPI inflation and nominal interest rate. This policy results in higher variability and nonzero means for both PPI inflation and output gap, thus leading to additional, but small, welfare costs compared with the unconstrained policy.

This study constructs a variety expansion growth model with public research spending. Public researchers financed by taxes on asset income, consumption, and corporate profits raise the productivity of private research and development. We show that the welfare-maximizing level of public research spending is below the growth-maximizing level. With regard to tax policy, a zero-profit tax maximizes the welfare of households. In addition, the study analyzes the dynamics of the economy, showing that equilibrium is indeterminate when the government's revenue source depends on an asset income tax.

This paper studies the role of monetary policy for the dynamics of US mortgage debt, which accounts for the largest part of household debt. A time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (VAR) model allows us to study the variation in the sensitivity of mortgage debt to monetary policy. We find that an identically sized policy shock became less effective over time. We use a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to show that a fall in the share of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) can replicate this finding. Calibrating the model to the drop in the ARM share since the 1980s yields a decline in the sensitivity of housing debt to monetary policy which is quantitatively similar to the VAR results. A sacrifice ratio for mortgage debt reveals that a policy tightening directed toward reducing household debt became more expensive in terms of a loss in employment. Counterfactuals show that this result cannot be attributed to changes in monetary policy itself.

While Perron and Wada (2009) maximum likelihood estimation approach suggests that postwar US real GDP follows a trend stationary process (TSP), our Bayesian approach based on the same model and the same sample suggests that it follows a difference stationary process (DSP). We first show that the results based on the approach should be interpreted with caution, as they are relatively more subject to the ‘pile-up problem’ than those based on the Bayesian approach. We then directly estimate and compare the two competing TSP and DSP models of real GDP within the Bayesian framework. Our empirical results suggest that a DSP model is preferred to a TSP model both in terms of in-sample fits and out-of-sample forecasts.

We build a model of search and matching in which agents trade using coins that are imperfectly recognizable, but have access to a coin inspection technology—known as coin assaying—that reveals the intrinsic content of coins for a fee. We consider two sources of imperfect information: counterfeit coins and clipping. With counterfeits, coin assaying reduces the extent of inefficiencies associated with imperfect recognizability of coins (namely lower traded quantities and lower trading frequencies). Yet coin assaying does not necessarily increase welfare, because it unmasks counterfeits that then trade at a discount, reducing total output. With clipping, we show that agents clip for two reasons: in the hope of passing an inferior coin for a superior one, and to reduce the purchasing power of coins that are too valuable. Although coin assaying could remove the first type of clipping, it had no effect on the second.

A classic result in dynamic public economics states that there is no welfare rationale for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pensions in a dynamically efficient overlapping-generations economy with exogenous labor supply. Parenthetically, a welfare justification for PAYG pensions exists if the economy is dynamically inefficient. Under the sufficient condition that the old be no less risk-averse than the young, both these results extend to an economy with endogenous labor supply.

We test the long-run neutrality of money proposition for the United States paying attention to the integration and cointegration properties of the variables. We use quarterly data (over the period from 1967:1 to 2014:1) and the new Center for Financial Stability Divisia monetary aggregates. We make a comparison among the narrower monetary aggregates, M1, M2M, MZM, M2, and ALL, and the broad monetary aggregates, M4+, M4-, and M3, and show that there is no statistically significant evidence against long-run monetary neutrality, consistent with both monetarist and Keynesian macroeconomic theory.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the development of waste recycling activities can be a source of economic fluctuations. We assume that the recycling sector has four fundamental characteristics. (i) The production factors are restricted by the production of the last period. (ii) These production factors are waste for which the price determination is noncompetitive. (iii) The sector produces a recycled good, which is a perfect substitute for the primary good. (iv) It reduces the waste stream. We consider the simplest economy, with an infinitely lived agent and a life-cycle hypothesis for the goods. We show that the equilibrium is unique and is always determinate. In spite of the lack of indeterminacy, however, our economy can display cyclical behavior, depending on some usual conditions on parameters. Namely, the steady state may undergo a flip bifurcation or a Hopf bifurcation.

This paper examines the effect of the elasticity of technological substitution on the existence of equilibrium indeterminacy in two-sector economies. Following recent empirical evidence, the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is below unity and we find that this requires a higher degree of productive externalities in order to still be able to produce indeterminate equilibria. However, empirically realistic rates of substitution do not rule out indeterminacy.

This paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with sticky prices and sticky wages, in which agents have imperfect information on the stance and direction of monetary policy. Agents respond by using Kalman filtering to unravel persistent and temporary monetary policy changes in order to form optimal forecasts of future policy actions. Our results show that a New Keynesian model with imperfect information and real rigidities can account for several key effects of an expansionary monetary policy shock: the hump-shaped increase in output, the delayed and gradual rise in inflation, and the fall in the nominal interest rate.

This paper builds on Lucas [Econometrica 68 (2000), 247–274] and on Cysne [Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 35 (2003), 221–238] to derive and order six alternative measures of the welfare costs of inflation (five of them already existing in the literature) for any vector of opportunity costs. We provide examples and closed-form solutions for each welfare measure based both on log–log and on semilog money demands, whenever possible in terms of elementary functions. Estimates of the maximum relative error a researcher can incur when using any of these measures are given. Everything is done for economies with or without interest-bearing deposits.

We investigate the business cycle effects of imperfect transmission of technology shocks within a basic real business cycle (RBC) model along two dimensions. First, we assume that agents cannot distinguish a temporary increase in productivity growth from a sustained increase in the underlying growth rate of productivity and instead must conduct signal extraction exercises and update beliefs about the source of aggregated shocks. Second, we propose a technology adjustment cost resulting in the slow diffusion of technological innovations into the production process. Both of these impediments to the transmission of technology result in a large initial wealth effect, increasing investment and hours less, relative to the usual RBC model without these frictions. Furthermore, each of these features is capable of producing a decline in hours on impact of the technology shock matching the negative response in hours found in the data by such works as Gali [American Economic Review 89(1), 249–271 (1999)].

It was always considered to be a major achievement of modern business cycle economics that it was solidly grounded in neoclassical growth theory. Preserving this joint foundation, however, imposes a discipline on the specification of models with variable capital utilization. In this note we show that conventional specifications of the depreciation cost of capital utilization and the labor supply elasticity, introduced into business cycle theory to generate a satisfactory amplification of shocks, entail counterfactual growth dynamics: the positive association between capital stock and GDP along the growth path turns negative. Across economies with access to the same technology, the economy with the lowest capital stock per capita is predicted to produce the highest output per capita. We compute lower and upper bounds for the involved elasticities between which these counterfactual dynamics are avoided.

Most emerging economies have been affected to some degree by the Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) policies. This paper assesses the impact of these measures in terms of key macroeconomic variables for four inflation-targeting small open economies in Latin America. We identify a QE policy shock in a structural vector autoregressive with block exogeneity and a mixture of zero and sign restrictions. Overall, we find that these QE policies have significant effects on financial variables such as the exchange rate, and these effects are larger with respect to those in output and prices. Furthermore, the effects vary across countries, and these are more significant in Chile and Mexico than in Peru and Colombia.

This paper shows that the optimal monetary policies recommended by New Keynesian models still imply a large amount of inflation risk. We calculate the term structure of inflation uncertainty in New Keynesian models when the monetary authority adopts the optimal policy. When the monetary policy rules are modified to include some weight on a price path, the economy achieves equilibria with substantially lower long-run inflation risk. With either sticky prices or sticky wages, a price path target reduces the variance of inflation by an order of magnitude more than it increases the variability of the output gap.