We provide a new way of deriving a number of dynamic unobserved factors from a set of variables. We show how standard principal components may be expressed in state space form and estimated using the Kalman filter. To illustrate our procedure, we perform two exercises. First, we use it to estimate a measure of the current account imbalances among northern and southern euro area countries that developed during the period leading up to the outbreak of the euro area crisis, before looking at adjustment in the post-crisis period. Second, we show how these dynamic factors can improve forecasting of the euro exchange rate.

Unemployment insurance schemes typically include eligibility conditions comprising the employment history prior to becoming unemployed, an aspect largely neglected in the literature. We develop an analytically tractable matching model including such contingencies. Unemployed determine reservation durations for jobs to be acceptable, and stronger employment histories increase reservation durations. This creates a stratification among unemployed; unemployed with short employment histories accept short-term jobs, while those with a strong employment history aims for jobs with a longer duration. A trade-off arises between the employment level and the matching quality in terms of job duration; a stronger reward to employment histories reduces employment, but improves match quality (more long-term jobs). Numerical simulations show that the distribution between short- and long-term jobs is significantly affected by history dependencies in benefits levels and duration. The optimal utilitarian policy is shown to include contingencies based on employment histories of the unemployed.

This paper argues that output can respond to public education spending in a delayed and persistent manner through human capital accumulation. We refer to this as a “time-release” response, reflecting that the output response grows as students exposed to increased expenditures sequentially enter the labor market. We first develop and calibrate a stochastic overlapping generations model to formalize the propagation of spending shocks over a long time horizon. We then empirically explore this time-release aspect of shocks to government education expenditures on output using US state-level data for the period 1963–2016 and a panel structural vector autoregression methodology. Consistent with the model, our empirical results show that the dynamic response of output to shocks to government education expenditures is positive, significant, and long-lasting.

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.

Multiple equilibria arise in standard New Keynesian models when the nominal interest rate is set according to the Taylor rule and constrained by a zero lower bound (ZLB). One of these equilibria is deflationary and referred to as an expectations-driven liquidity trap (ELT) as it arises because of the de-anchoring of inflation expectations. This study demonstrates that a simple tax rule responding to inflation can prevent a liquidity trap from arising without increasing government spending or debt. We analytically investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions to prevent an ELT and show that both the frequency and persistence of ELT episodes affect the extent to which the tax rule must respond to inflation. In brief, the higher the frequency or the longer the persistence of the ELT, the greater the response of the tax rate must be.

In the discrete-time new-Keynesian model with public debt, Ramsey optimal policy eliminates the indeterminacy of simple-rules multiple equilibria between the fiscal theory of the price level versus new-Keynesian versus an unpleasant equilibrium. If public debt volatility is taken into account into the loss function, the interest rate responds to public debt besides inflation and output gap. Else, the Taylor rule is identical to Ramsey optimal policy when there is zero public debt. The optimal fiscal-rule parameter implies the local stability of public-debt dynamics (“passive” fiscal policy).

The global financial crisis was characterized by heightened financial risk in the USA, which spread to the rest of the world, including emerging economies. This paper constructs a core–periphery model with a global banking network and financial frictions. Due to a common-lender effect, when global banks lend to an emerging economy, heightened financial risk in the center depresses cross-border lending to the emerging economy, reducing real activities, and exacerbating monetary policy trade-offs. As financial markets become more integrated, exchange rate flexibility becomes less welfare enhancing and active capital account policy becomes more welfare enhancing.

This paper quantifies the welfare gains from Social Security when individuals face uninsurable longevity risk. While past researchers have studied this basic question, we do so from a unique perspective. In contrast to traditional macroeconomic models that abstract from specific linkages between parents and children, in our model, children are born to specific parents whose longevity is uncertain. And because parental asset holdings evolve over the life of the parent, children face uninsurable bequest income risk in addition to their own longevity risk. We find that Social Security improves ex ante expected utility by 3.4% of lifetime consumption (for the second generation). Because our baseline analysis assumes full information and optimal hedging of longevity risk, we treat these welfare gains as a conservative estimate, and we show that the gains are significantly larger when individuals fail to hedge their longevity risk.

This paper examines how population aging affects the output effect of a government spending shock by using a panel data of OECD countries. The government spending shock is identified as a forecast error of government spending, and its output effect is estimated by using the local projection method. We find that population aging affects the output effect of the government spending shock. While in non-aging economies, government spending shock increases output significantly in both short- and medium-terms, in aging economies, output responses are not statistically significant.