We analyze the consequences of external debt collaterals on the optimal growth path of a country. We develop a small open economy model of endogenous growth where public spending can be financed by borrowing on imperfect international financial markets, where the country's borrowing capacity is limited. In contrast to the existing literature, which assumes that debt is constrained by the stock of capital, we investigate the consequences of gross domestic product (GDP)-based collaterals. First, we demonstrate that the economy may converge in a finite time, which is determined endogenously, to the regime with binding collaterals. Second, in such regime the steady-state public expenditures-to-GDP ratio is greater than that of the existing literature's models. Finally, we show that the degree of financial openness rises welfare if the collateral constraint is nonbinding and reduces welfare if the constraint binds. The first effect prevails always over the second and total intertemporal welfare increases.

The perception that inflation targeting (IT) runs a high risk of indeterminacy when a significant share of households are too poor to save is an artifact of the closed economy. In the open economy, the Taylor principle is generally valid for both contemporaneous and forward-looking IT. Active policy in contemporaneous IT guarantees determinacy, eccentric cases aside. In forward-looking IT, the scope for active policy is constrained by an upper bound on the Taylor coefficient. The upper bound is insensitive, however, to the share of poor, nonsaving households. Moreover, it can be increased substantially–to a level that does not bind–through reserve sales/purchases that limit exchange rate volatility.

This paper examines the stability of sunspot equilibria in one-sector RBC models under infinite horizon learning. We present general conditions under which the reduced-form model can possess E-stable sunspot equilibria and apply these conditions to three prominent one-sector RBC models. We find that the rational expectations sunspot equilibria are generally unstable under learning.

The seminal cobweb model by Brock and Hommes reveals that fixed-point dynamics may turn into increasingly complex dynamics, as firms switch more quickly between competing expectation rules. While policy makers may be able to manage such rational routes to randomness by imposing a proportional profit tax, the stability-ensuring tax rate may cause a very high tax burden for firms. Using a mix of analytical and numerical tools, we show that a rather small profit-dependent lump-sum tax may even be sufficient to take away the competitive edge of cheap destabilizing expectation rules, thereby contributing to market stability.

This paper analyzes whether the Fed had the ability through its conventional monetary policy to affect key economic and financial variables, and, in particular, the term structure of interest rates, during the recent financial crisis. This departs from the empirical literature that focuses mainly on the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policies during this episode, although these policies are appropriate only to the extent that the conventional policy was ineffective in the first place. Our identification strategy based on the conditional heteroskedasticity of the structural innovations allows us to specify a flexible structural vector auto-regressive process that relaxes the identifying assumptions commonly used in earlier studies. Comparing our results obtained from samples excluding and including the financial crisis, we find that the conventional monetary policy has lost its effectiveness shortly after the beginning of the financial turmoil. This result suggests that the Fed's use of unconventional policies was appropriate, at least, with the objective of changing the term structure of interest rates.

US labor share has been falling since the 1970s. I show that it has not fallen as much once items that do not add to capital, depreciation and production taxes, are netted out. Recent net labor share is within its historical range, whereas gross share is at its lowest level. This effect holds for other high-income economies. The overall picture is no longer one of unprecedented, globally declining labor share. Using gross share as a proxy for net share can give misleading results. US gross share and inequality are correlated, whereas net share, the correct measure, is not.

We amend the canonical matching model by assuming diminishing returns to labor. We put the model to the twin test of generating a high volatility of labor market variables in response to productivity shocks (the “Shimer puzzle”) and a moderate response to changes in unemployment benefits and find that it passes that test. It does not feature wage rigidity, nor is it based on a small surplus calibration. Diminishing returns introduce a distinction between marginal and average surplus. With a standard (large average surplus) calibration, we can have a small marginal surplus, and thus a strong response of hiring to productivity shocks, while obtaining a measured response of unemployment to changes in benefits.

Yes, indeed; at least for macroeconomic policy interaction. We examine a Neo-Classical economy and provide the conditions for policy arrangements to successfully stabilize the economy when agents have either rational or adaptive expectations. For a contemporaneous-data monetary policy rule, the monetarist solution is unique and stationary under a passive fiscal/active monetary policy regime if monetary policy appropriately incorporates expectational heterogeneity. In contrast, the active fiscal/passive monetary policy regime's fiscalist solution is prone to explosiveness due to empirically plausible expectational heterogeneity. Nevertheless, this can be a well-defined, rather orthodox equilibrium. For operational monetary policy rules, only the results for the fiscalist solution prevail. Moreover, our results are plausible from an adaptive learning viewpoint.

A general equilibrium model with financial frictions in which individuals may encounter unobservable investment opportunities is developed along the lines of Kiyotaki and Moore (2012). I study efficiency properties induced by money and monetary policy when financial frictions prevent optimal equilibrium allocations. By providing closed-form solutions to all prices, allocations, welfare, and, especially, the distribution of individuals with respect to assets, I show that the Friedman rule achieves maximal social welfare, independent of how tight the financial constraints may be. The same level of welfare would be induced by an omniscient central planner able to verify who has an investment opportunity.

When the returns to scale of a production process vary with the intensity it is operated at, an AK model with constant returns to scale in production arises endogenously due to replication driven by profit maximization. If replication occurs at the efficiency-maximizing scale, as with perfect competition, the result applies also when the number of production processes must be discrete, thus, overcoming the so-called integer problem. When competition is imperfect, there is only convergence toward the AK model for large enough input use, so an economy is more prone to stalling in a steady state without growth, the smaller and less competitive it is.

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