Standard economic theories of asset markets assume that assets are valued entirely for the consumption streams they can finance. This paper examines the introduction of the demand for status (as a function of wealth) into a model of uninsurable idiosyncratic risk—the “spirit of capitalism” (“soc”) assumption. We find that soc preferences lead to less inequality in wealth; placing wealth into the utility function leads to a shrinking wealth distribution. The drop in wealth concentration is smaller if the utility function implies status is a luxury good, but no parametrization leads to higher wealth Gini coefficients than the benchmark case. We then consider the consequences of revenue-neutral tax reforms with and without soc preferences, finding that they make little difference for this policy experiment.

This paper explores the shape of the Japanese money demand function in relation to the historical path of the Bank of Japan's policy rate by employing Saikkonen and Choi's [Econometric Theory 20, 301–340 (2004)] cointegrating smooth transition model. The nonlinear model provides a unified econometric framework, not only for pursuing the time profile of interest elasticity, but also to test the linearity of the Japanese money demand function. The test results for the linearity of the Japanese money demand function provide evidence of nonlinearity with a semilog model and linearity with a double-log model. Using a nonlinear semilog model, the analysis also finds that Japanese money demand comprises three regimes and that the interest semielasticity began to increase in the early 1990s when the Bank of Japan set the policy rate below 3%.

We examine whether the importance of lagged inflation in the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) may be a result of specification biases. NKPCs are estimated for four countries: France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Using time-varying coefficient (TVC) estimation, a procedure that can deal with possible specification biases, we find support for the NKPC model that excludes lagged inflation. Our results indicate a Phillips-curve relationship for the countries considered that does not contain an inertial element.

Herbert A. Simon, 1978 Economics Nobel Prize laureate, talked about satisficing (his neologism) rather than optimizing as being what economists really need. Indeed, optimization might be an unsuitable solution procedure (in that it suggests a unique “optimal” solution) for problems where many solutions could be satisfactory. We think that looking for an applicable monetary policy is a problem of this kind because there is no unique way in which a central bank can achieve a desired inflation (unemployment, etc.) path. We think that it is viability theory, which is a relatively young area of mathematics, that rigorously captures the essence of satisficing. We aim to use viability analysis to analyze a simple macro policy model and show how some robust adjustment rules can be endogenously obtained.

This paper is the introduction to the Macroeconomic Dynamics Special Issue on Measurement with Theory. The Guest Editors of the special issue are William A. Barnett, W. Erwin Diewert, Shigeru Iwata, and Arnold Zellner. The papers included are part of a larger initiative to promote measurement with theory in economics.

This paper examines a class of interest rate rules that respond to public expectations and to lagged variables and considers varying levels of commitment that correspond to varying degrees of response to lagged output. Under commitment the policymaker adjusts the nominal rate with lagged output to impact public expectations. Within this class of rules, I provide a condition for nonexplosive and determinate solutions. Expectational stability obtains for any nonnegative response to lagged output. Simulation results show that modified commitment is best under least-squares learning. However, in the presence of parameter uncertainty and/or measurement error in the policymaker's data on public expectations, the best policy is one of partial commitment, where the response to lagged output is less than under modified commitment. The case for partial commitment is strengthened if the gain parameter in the learning mechanism is high, which can be interpreted as the use of few lags by public agents in the formation of expectations or as an indication of low credibility of the policymaker. The appointment of a conservative central banker ameliorates these concerns about modified commitment.

The Ramsey optimal taxation theory implies that the tax rate on capital income should be zero in the long run. This result holds even if the social planner only cares about workers that do not hold assets, or if the planner only cares about any other group in the economy. This paper demonstrates that although all households agree that capital income taxation should be eliminated in the long run, they do not agree on how to eliminate these taxes. Wealthy households would prefer a reform that is funded by higher taxes on labor income, whereas households with little wealth would prefer a reform that is funded mostly by high taxes on initial wealth. Pareto-improving reforms typically exist, but the welfare gains of such reforms are modest.

The Forward Premium Puzzle is widely considered to indicate inefficiency in the foreign exchange market. This paper proposes a resolution of the puzzle using recursive least squares learning. Risk-neutral agents learn the unknown parameters, underlying the exchange rate generation process, using constant-gain recursive least squares. Simulations using plausible model parameter values replicate the anomaly along with other observed empirical features of the forward and spot exchange rate data. Estimates of parameter values from data support the model assumptions and justify the use of constant-gain learning. The conclusion is that the puzzle is not necessarily a reflection of inefficiency.

The U.S. economy has experienced a reduction in volatility since the mid-1980s. In this paper we investigate the changes in the response of the economy to an oil price shock and the role of the systematic monetary policy response in accounting for changes in the response of output, prices, inventories, sales, and the overall decline in volatility. Our results suggest a smaller and more short-lived response of most macro variables during the Volcker-Greenspan period. It also appears that whereas the systematic monetary policy response dampened fluctuations in economic activity during the 1970s, it has had virtually no effect after the “Great Moderation.”

We propose a framework in which expectations have a rational and a learning component. We describe a solution method for these frameworks and provide an application to the Volcker disinflation with the New Keynesian model. Although the model with rational expectations does not seem to account for this episode, results improve when a small and empirically plausible proportion of private agents are learning. The learning component is argued to be more robust and plausible than the rule-of-thumb expectations present in the hybrid Phillips curve.

This paper offers possible explanations for three generally observed facts about fiscal policy and development: (F1) the relative size of government increases as an economy develops, (F2) the rise in government and taxation are associated with rising or constant economic growth rates, and (F3) today's developing countries have larger government sectors than today's developed countries had at similar stages of development. The explanations for these facts are based on the structural transformation from traditional to modern production, rising public infrastructure investment, and less democratic governments in many of today's developing economies.

Consistent real income comparisons over time and space are critical for studies on catch-up and convergence. The paper provides an analytical framework for making real income comparisons across countries and over time that satisfy transitivity and at the same time reflect an underlying nonhomothetic utility function for a representative consumer. The concept of reference price comparisons is developed and implemented using nonhomothetic translog and almost ideal demand systems. The paper discusses a direct approach, which uses all the parameters of the demand system to make real income comparisons, and an indirect approach, which adjusts the national price-based comparisons using reduced information only on income elasticities of demand. The proposed approach is empirically implemented using data from the 1980 and 1996 benchmark data from the International Comparison Program, and the empirical results confirm the analytical results discussed in the paper.

We estimate consumption Euler equations using U.K. household-level data, employing a switching regression technique. We find excess sensitivity to income for one group of households but not for a second group. The likelihood of excess sensitivity is greater for the young, those without liquid assets, the degree-educated, ethnic minorities and those with negative home equity, consistent with liquidity constraints and buffer-stock saving. Housing capital gains affect the consumption plans of the excess sensitivity group of households, but not the other group. These results are consistent with a “collateral channel” for housing. Around 20%–40% of U.K. households display excess sensitivity.

Previous research has found that the dynamic response of hours worked to a technology shock crucially depends on whether the hours variable is assumed to be an I(0) or an I(1) variable ex ante. In this paper we employ a multivariate fractionally integrated model that allows us to simultaneously estimate the order of integration of hours worked and its dynamic response to a technology shock. Our evidence lends support to the hypothesis that hours fall in response to a positive technology shock.

In a two-country world economy, endogenous interest rate adjustment makes one country's consumption-habit dynamics affected by the other country's habit. External indebtedness depends crucially on international differences in habit-adjusted net output less habitual living standard. Interest rate adjustment enlarges the consumption impact of an income shock. Consistent with the empirical facts, the habit parameter of a large country would thus be underestimated, and the current account volatility overestimated, if they were estimated using a small-country model. An increase in fiscal spending in one country can benefit the country and harm the neighbor one due to reversed intertemporal terms-of-trade effects.

This paper explores how retirement timing, together with life-cycle saving and human capital investment in children, responds to rising longevity in a recursive model with altruistic agents. We find that rising longevity raises the retirement age. If initial life expectancy is not too high, rising longevity also raises human capital investment in children and the saving rate. Through these channels, rising longevity can be conducive to long-run economic growth. A binding mandatory retirement age reduces human capital investment and the growth rate, raises the saving rate, and reduces welfare.

We study a Ramsey problem in infinite and continuous time and space. The problem is discounted both temporally and spatially. Capital flows to locations with higher marginal return. We show that the problem amounts to optimal control of parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs). We rely on the existing related mathematical literature to derive the Pontryagin conditions. Using explicit representations of the solutions to the PDEs, we first show that the resulting dynamic system gives rise to an ill-posed problem in the sense of Hadamard. We then turn to the spatial Ramsey problem with linear utility. The obtained properties are significantly different from those of the nonspatial linear Ramsey model due to the spatial dynamics induced by capital mobility.

Business cycle models with sticky prices and endogenous firm entry make novel predictions on the transmission of shocks through the extensive margin of investment. I test some of these predictions using a VAR with model-based sign restrictions. I find a positive and significant response of firm entry to expansionary shocks to productivity, aggregate spending, monetary policy, and entry costs. The estimated response to a monetary expansion does not support the monetary policy transmission mechanism proposed by the model. Insofar as firm startups require labor services, wage stickiness is needed to make the signs of the model responses consistent with the estimated ones. The shapes of the empirical responses suggest that congestion effects in entry make it harder for new firms to survive when the number of startups rises.

This paper studies an economy with ex post heterogeneity and nominal bonds in a model à la Lagos and Wright (2005). It is shown that a strictly positive interest rate is a sufficient condition for the allocation with nominal bonds to be welfare-improving. This result comes from protection against the inflation tax.

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.