This study develops a Malthusian model for the evolution of human society from hunting-gathering to agriculture and from agriculture to industrial production. Human society evolves across these stages as the population grows. However, under endogenous population growth, the population may stop growing at any stage. If it fails to reach the first threshold, the population remains as hunter-gatherers. If it reaches the first threshold, an agricultural society emerges. Then, if the population fails to reach the industrial threshold, it remains in an agricultural Malthusian trap without experiencing industrialization. Interestingly, high agricultural productivity triggers not only the Neolithic Revolution but also the subsequent industrialization. Using cross-country data to test this result, we employ an index of prehistoric biogeographic conditions that affect agricultural productivity as an instrument for the timing of transitions to agriculture and find that an earlier transition to agriculture has a positive effect on industrialization in the modern era.

This paper develops an efficient Stein-like shrinkage estimator for estimating slope parameters under structural breaks in seemingly unrelated regression models, which is then used for forecasting. The proposed method is a weighted average of two estimators: a restricted estimator that estimates the parameters under the restriction of no break in the coefficients, and an unrestricted estimator that considers break points and estimates the parameters using the observations within each regime. It is established that the asymptotic risk of the Stein-like shrinkage estimator is smaller than that of the unrestricted estimator, which is the method typically used to estimate the slope coefficients under structural breaks. Furthermore, this paper proposes an averaging minimal mean squared error estimator in which the averaging weight is derived by minimizing its asymptotic risk. Insights from the theoretical analysis are demonstrated in Monte Carlo simulations and through an empirical example of forecasting output growth of G7 countries.

Optimal monetary policy, under flexible and sticky prices, and sticky nominal wages are studied in the canonical matching model of the labor market with a working capital channel. A money demand by firms is motivated by the fact that a significant amount of M1 is held by firms. As a result of the working capital, the Ramsey-optimal monetary policy calls for inflation when employment is above the socially efficient level and for deflation when it is below that level. This result holds under flexible wages as well as nominal wage rigidities. In other words, to improve labor market efficiency, deflation is necessary to “grease the wheels of the labor market.” Although there is no relationship between optimal monetary policy and the market tightness under flexible prices, a long-run and mainly negative relationship between the optimal inflation rate and the equilibrium tightness emerges under sticky prices.

Because economic outcomes depend on private-sector expectations, central banks might be tempted to guide these by publishing projections of key macroeconomic variables. We find that optimal projections require misleading the public. Optimal non-misleading projections are time-inconsistent. Non-misleading time-consistent projections can only improve policy outcomes if the public’s forecasts are noisier, or inconsistent with implemented policy. Since the public only has incentives to be guided by policymakers’ projections when most vulnerable to being mislead, these cannot be trusted blindly. Consistent with this, we find statistically significant systematic deviations between FOMC projections and professional forecasts for US inflation and GDP growth.

In many countries, the structure of wages and the labor law legislation are completely different for public and private sector employees. In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium overlapping generations model to study the effect of such differences on household savings and labor supply. To conduct our analysis, first we use microdata from two Brazilian household surveys to document that civil servants save and work significantly less than their counterparts in the private sector. Second, we use matched employer–employee microdata from Brazil (RAIS) to document differences between the two sectors in terms of wage and unemployment risk. Then, we calibrate the model to be consistent with micro and macro evidence for Brazil. Our counterfactual exercises show that differences in wages characteristics and labor law legislation account for nearly 70% of the gap in savings between civil servants and private sector workers, and 57% of the gap in labor supply. In addition, we find that eliminating those differences can produce sizable increase on aggregate savings, employment, and welfare.

This paper incorporates the variable elasticity of substitution preferences in the variety expansion model developed by Grossman and Helpman [(1991) Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy, MIT Press]. There exists a balanced growth path when the elasticity of substitution is constant with knowledge spillover. When the elasticity of substitution is variable and the knowledge spillover is sufficiently small, a unique and stable steady state exists. When the knowledge spillover is sufficiently large, the steady state is unique and unstable. When the size of the knowledge externality is moderate, multiple equilibria exist.

I develop and study a factor-augmented quasi-vector autoregressive (FAQVAR) model for economic policy analysis in tumultuous times. An observation-driven framework that exploits the information from the score of the model allows a maximum likelihood estimation. This multivariate FAQVAR model, which assumes a Student t error distribution, is robust to atypical observations such as the global financial crisis and the recent pandemic. The model outperforms the FAVAR moving average model because of the assumed heavy tails that capture the COVID-19 atypical data and other turbulent episodes. An empirical application to the U.S. economy assessing its monetary policy reveals that estimates and impulse responses are stable when considering the sample before and during COVID-19.

We study an OLG model with child policies and a PAYG pension with endogenous retirement and fertility. The result of the planned economy is compared to the decentralized competitive equilibrium deriving optimal policies. We show that in the presence of a PAYG pension system, the optimal policy mix includes an education subsidy and a subsidy for the supply of labor in old age. Fertility should be taxed or incentivized depending on whether there is full or partial retirement, and on the parameters. We focus on the parameter reflecting the deterioration of human capital and show that a child tax may be required.

The US Social Security program was created in part as an explicit response to the Great Depression. We evaluate the performance of Social Security as a protective safety net against a rare episode of sudden and significant loss of private wealth such as the Great Depression. We construct a model in which a rare event causes a shock to wealth at an unknown time. How well does Social Security function as a safety net against such risk? The answer depends critically on whether households optimize in the face of this risk. If the household has full information on the distribution of rare event risk and solves a dynamic stochastic problem to hedge this risk, then Social Security is unnecessary along this dimension. Alternatively, if the household does not account for rare event risk in its financial planning, then Social Security can provide very large welfare gains as a safety net.

A general wisdom, since at least the work of Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe [(1997) Journal of Political Economy 105, 976–1000.], holds that a government that relies on adjusting factor income tax rates to achieve budget objective may induce aggregate instability driven by self-fulfilling expectations. This paper shows that this conventional wisdom may be overturned if the rate of adjustment of the capital income tax rate is bigger than that of the labor income tax rate. How much bigger depends on country specifics and particularly on the levels of the capital and labor income tax rates. Thus, adjustments in capital and labor income tax rates, if properly designed and implemented, can help achieve the budget objective while at the same time preempting extrinsic volatility.

The rapid development of the digital economy has highlighted the crucial role of data in economic growth. This study investigates the impact of two types of innovation on long-term growth by incorporating data into a model of creative destruction and knowledge accumulation. Unlike traditional factors, data exhibit nonrivalry between the two research and development (R&D) sectors, thereby influencing the growth rate of economic outputs simultaneously without interference. Our findings reveal the existence of a balanced growth path (BGP) in both the decentralized economy and the social planner’s economy. In horizontal innovation, data can be transformed into digital knowledge to promote the economic growth [Cong et al. (2021)]. In addition to horizontal innovation, the utilization of data in vertical innovation also enhances the success rate of innovation, with a gradual decrease in per capita data usage on the BGP. Moreover, as agents accumulate human capital, the economy achieves higher output levels, effectively addressing consumer privacy concerns. However, along the transitional path, insufficient data provision by both R&D sectors leads to lower economic growth rates or more intense economic fluctuations, necessitating policy interventions.

This empirical paper deals with the impacts of sentiment about the future, short-run risk, and long-run risk in a dynamic economic model of optimal consumption decisions with Schroder and Skiadas [(1999) Journal of Economic Theory 89, 68–126.] continuous-time stochastic recursive preferences. The empirical strategy combines both a latent factor method and a democratic orthogonalization technique. The latent factor method is applied to a large database of macroeconomic indicators, and a democratic orthogonalization technique is used to separate the relative importance of sentiment about the future and long-run risk channels in shaping optimal consumption decisions. The empirical results suggest that consumers with recursive preferences are not indifferent to long-run uncertainty shocks to future consumption prospects. Endogenous consumption variations are driven by a multicomponent mechanism, where on average, the sentiment component accounts for 15.33%, the short-run risk accounts for 16.89%, and the long-run risk pertains to 34.51%.

We develop a simple two-sector neoclassical growth model in which the upstream sector produces intermediate goods, and the downstream sector produces final goods with outputs from the upstream. While the downstream sector features perfect competition, firms in the upstream sector engage in Cournot competition and charge a markup. We show that the deregulation and the introduction of competition in the upstream goods sector not only increases the productivity in the sector but also has a substantial spillover effect on the productivity of the downstream sector and factor prices. We calibrate the model to the Chinese economy and use the calibrated model to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which the deregulation in the upstream market in China from 1998 to 2006 can account for the rapid economic growth and the high and rising returns to capital in China over the same period. Our quantitative experiments show that the deregulation in the upstream sector can account for a significant share of economic growth in China during the study period. In addition, our model delivers implications that are consistent with several other relevant observations in China during the same period.