In a standard overlapping generations model, we show how the health effects of pollution impact the balanced-growth path (BGP) and the transition dynamics of the economy. The key driver is the differential between physical and human capital accumulation. The differential occurs because pollution alters the incentives to save and to invest in education via reductions in longevity and alters the effectiveness of education expenditures via impaired cognitive learning. Two predictions of the model are noteworthy. The first prediction is the existence of two stable BGPs with a separating saddle path. One BGP is desirable featuring high economic growth and low pollution, whereas the other should be avoided because it is associated with low economic growth and high pollution. The second prediction is that economic and environmental cycles may emerge, implying inequality between generations. These theoretical results are supported by empirical evidence and imply a role for government to steer the economy toward the desirable BGP and eliminate the cycles.

This paper uses Bayesian methods to estimate a small-scale New Keynesian model with heterogeneous expectations (HE). Agents form expectations via Euler equation adaptive learning (AL) and differ by the model they use to forecast. Type A agents use a correctly specified model, while type B and type C agents use misspecified models. Quarterly US data from the pre-Great Moderation and Great Moderation periods are used to jointly estimate the degree of agent heterogeneity, the AL parameters, and the deep model parameters. Results show that the data exhibit significant expectational heterogeneity, and that the HE model fits the data better than a model with homogeneous agent AL.

The paper utilizes a common approach to derive sufficient conditions for strictly monotonic behavior of three ratios along the transition to the steady state in the Ramsey–Cass–Koopmans model: the consumption–capital ratio, the consumption–output ratio (and the saving rate), and the consumption–wage ratio. These conditions are then applied to derive additional results on the transitional dynamics of the distribution of wealth in the model (when individual consumers are differentiated by their initial wealth endowments).

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 derives the optimal unemployment insurance (UI) transfer scheme, UI benefits, and UI contribution fees: When a worker has to earn his or her UI eligibility through work, the UI benefits do not last forever, and the UI agency has imperfect monitoring power on the strategic behavior of the worker. We show that the consideration of the UI eligibility rule generates the effective entitlement effect, which serves as an additional incentive device and alters the nature of the optimal UI transfer scheme established in literature. In contrast with previous studies, we find that when the effective entitlement effect is large, it completely removes the moral hazards in job searches, job acceptances, and job quits. As a result, the optimal UI benefits and contribution fees become constant. Calibrated to the data in the United States, the model reproduces some key features of the existing UI system.

We explore how tax evasion by firms affects the growth- and welfare-maximizing rates of corporate income tax (CIT) in an endogenous growth model with productive public service. We show that the negative effect of CIT on growth is mitigated in the presence of tax evasion. This increases the benefit of raising the CIT rate for public service provision. Thus, in contrast to Barro [(1990) Journal of Political Economy 98, 103–125], the optimal tax rate is higher than the output elasticity of public service. Through numerical exercises, we demonstrate that the role of tax evasion by firms is quantitatively significant.

We introduce skill decay during unemployment into a New Keynesian model with hiring frictions and real-wage rigidity. Plausible values of quarterly skill decay and real-wage rigidity turn the long-run marginal cost–unemployment relationship positive in a “European” labor market with little hiring but not in a fluid “American” one. If the marginal cost–unemployment relationship is positive, determinacy requires a passive response to inflation in the central bank's interest feedback rule if the rule features only inflation. Targeting steady-state output or unemployment helps to restore determinacy.

This paper studies asymmetric dynamics of real GDP growth by estimating linear and nonlinear quantile persistence over different parts of the conditional distribution for six major developed economies. Several novel quantile-based hypotheses are motivated in this paper and tested for the steepness asymmetry of real GDP growth that hypothesizes that contractions are steeper than expansions. The empirical results show that quantile persistence is generally high at far lower tails, thus requiring much longer half-lives to reverting negative deviations to the mean of real GDP growth and hence leading to gradual economic recoveries. By contrast, less persistence in far upper tails tends to generate sharp and short economic downturns that adjust positive deviations towards the mean of real GDP growth so as to cause abrupt economic recessions. In particular, this asymmetry in quantile persistence strongly supports the steepness asymmetry conjecture, robust to the presence of structural breaks and potential nonlinearities in real GDP growth.

This paper proves the existence of competitive equilibrium in a single-sector dynamic economy with heterogeneous agents, elastic labor supply, and complete asset markets. The method of proof relies on some recent results concerning the existence of Lagrange multipliers in infinite-dimensional spaces and their representation as a summable sequence and a direct application of the inward-boundary fixed point theorem.

Habit formation is a fixture of contemporary new Keynesian models. The vast majority assume that agents form habits strictly over consumption of an aggregate good, leaving open the question of whether it might be preferable to have them form habits over differentiated products instead–an arrangement known as deep habits. I answer this question by estimating a model that nests both habit concepts as special cases. Estimates reveal that the data favor a specification in which consumption habits are stronger at the product level than at the aggregate level. A mix of significance tests and simulation results indicate that including deep habits greatly improves model fit, most notably with regard to inflation dynamics.

In overlapping-generations economies with life-cycle saving and exogenous growth, the laissez-faire equilibrium balanced growth path fails in general to achieve optimality, but is dynamically efficient if the marginal product of physical capital is greater than the growth rate of the economy. In this paper, we accommodate the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping-generations economy with endogenous growth due to human capital accumulation. We show that the condition that the marginal product of physical capital is larger than the growth rate of the economy is necessary but no longer sufficient for the dynamic efficiency of the laissez-faire equilibrium balanced growth path.

This study constructs a dynamic model of the coexistence of public and private schools to study the impact of voucher programs when there are nonlinear peer group effects. The government provides public schools as well as tuition vouchers for households attending private schools. School quality depends on expenditure per student and peer quality within the school. When peer quality is nonlinear, more agents will choose public schools if peer quality is more substitutable, whereas more agents will attend private schools if peer quality is more complementary. We find that vouchers will typically create a “cream skimming” effect and the impact of voucher programs on economic performance is sensitive to the way in which peer interactions affect school quality.

This paper analyzes periods of economic stagnation in a panel of countries. We test whether stagnation can be predicted by institutional characteristics and political shocks and compare the impacts of such variables with those of traditional macroeconomic variables. We examine the determinants of stagnation episodes using dynamic linear and nonlinear models. In addition, we analyze whether the effects of the included variables on the onset of stagnation differ from their effects on the continuation of stagnation. We find that inflation, negative regime changes, real exchange rate undervaluation, financial openness, and trade openness have significant effects on both the onset and the continuation of stagnation. Only for trade openness is there robust evidence of a differential impact. Open economies have a significantly lower probability of falling into stagnation, but once in stagnation they do not recover faster.

We first explore empirical evidence of parameter and shock uncertainties in a state-space model with Markov switching. The evidence indicates that uncertainties in the U.S. economy have been too great to accurately define monetary policy rules. We then explore monetary policy rules under uncertainty with two approaches: the RLS learning algorithm and robust control. The former allows the parameters to be learned for a given model. Yet, as our results of the RLS learning in a framework of optimal control indicate, the state variables do not necessarily converge even in a nonstochastic model. The latter, by permitting uncertainty with respect to model misspecification, allows for a broader framework. Our study on robust control shows that robust optimal monetary policy rules reveal a stronger response to fluctuations in inflation and output than when no uncertainty exists, implying that uncertainty does not necessarily require caution.

This article presents a solution algorithm for linear rational expectation models under imperfect information, in which some decisions are made based on smaller information sets than others. In our solution representation, imperfect information does not affect the coefficients on crawling variables, which implies that, if a perfect-information model exhibits saddle-path stability, for example, the corresponding imperfect-information models also exhibit saddle-path stability. However, imperfect information can significantly alter the quantitative properties of a model. Indeed, this article demonstrates that, with a predetermined wage contract, the standard RBC model remarkably improves the correlation between labor productivity and output.

The market economy is modeled as a decentralized joint production system. Markets in such an economy require the use of money or credit instruments to facilitate exchange. As a result, market economies are at risk for monetary instability induced by real-side production coordination failure. In particular, economies decentralized via centralized wholesaling markets are subject to precipitous collapses. The most stable monetary system is trade in specie. However, there very likely is a scarcity of specie, which generates inefficiency and discourages production. There is, then, a need for an elastic currency. Bank-issued bills of exchange are a perfectly elastic medium and eliminate the scarcity of specie and its attendant inefficiency, but are a less stable monetary system than is trade in specie. In the trade-off between elasticity and stability, fiduciary currency (or fiduciary deposits) lies between specie and bank-issued bills of exchange.

Evolutionary game theory provides a fresh perspective on the prospect that agents with heterogeneous expectations might eventually come to agree on a single expectation corresponding to the efficient markets hypothesis. We establish conditions under which agreement on a unique forecast is stable, but also show that persistent heterogeneous expectations can arise if those conditions do not hold. The critical element is the degree of curvature in the payoff weighting functions agents use to value forecasting performance. We illustrate our results in the context of an asset pricing model where a martingale solution competes with the fundamental solution for agents' attention.

This paper examines an intertemporal optimizing consumer or a representative consumer-firm in a deterministic setting subject to a general (either linear or nonlinear) capital accumulation equation. Duality theory is used to recast the Hamilton–Jacobi equation for dynamic optimization in terms of an instantaneous and an intertemporal profit function. An envelope theorem allows derivation of an explicit solution for the value of the costate variable as a function of the state and other variables. The final model form only requires specification of atemporal functions that are linked into a closed-form solution for the optimal dynamic decision variables through a system of contemporaneous simultaneous equations.

This paper analyzes the effects of technological risk on long-run growth when labor supply is elastic and production gives rise to a pollution externality. We show that the randomness of production, as well as the endogeneity of labor supply, affects the equilibrium solutions for the social planner and for the market economy. We analyze the effects of environmental policy, discuss conditions for an optimal policy, and find that the response of labor supply to changes in the model parameters and to variations in the policy instruments crucially depends on the volatility of output.

This study examines the influence of foreign direct investment (FDI), overseas development aid (ODA), and remittances on the enrollment of girls and boys in 103 countries over the years 1970–2011. The results suggest that remittances have a contemporaneous robust significant influence on enrollment, with the positive effect being slightly higher for girls than for boys. FDI and ODA have an influence on the enrollment of girls and boys only after a significant time lag. The results also suggest that the impact of remittances on enrollment is increased through income and a well-developed financial sector; FDI through better institutions and a well-developed financial sector; and ODA through better government policy.