查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier B.V.This paper investigates the causal effect of economic sentiment on consumption using Gallup micro-data between 2008 and 2017. After showing that individuals update their beliefs about the national state of the economy in response to local housing and labor market fluctuations, I use the Facebook Social Connectedness Index (SCI) to construct an SCI-weighted index of housing price growth that captures individuals’ exposure to housing market shocks in connected zip codes. Using plausibly exogenous variation in individuals’ exposure to friends who experience heterogeneous housing price growth, I find that a standard deviation rise in economic sentiment is associated with a 17.3–24.6% rise in consumption of non-durables.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The AuthorsThe interest rate at which US firms borrow funds has two features: (i) it moves in a countercyclical fashion and (ii) it is an inverted leading indicator of real economic activity: low interest rates today forecast future booms in GDP, consumption, investment, and employment. We show that a Kiyotaki–Moore model accounts for both properties when interest-rate movements are driven, in a significant way, by self-fulfilling belief shocks that redistribute income away from lenders and to borrowers during booms. The credit-based nature of such self-fulfilling equilibria is shown to be essential: the dynamic correlation between current loanable funds rate and future aggregate economic activity depends critically on the property that the interest rate is state-contingent. Bayesian estimation of our benchmark DSGE model on US data shows that the model driven by redistribution shocks results in a better fit to the data than both standard RBC models and Kiyotaki–Moore type models with unique equilibrium.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier B.V.This paper constructs a Two-Agent New Keynesian model in which the monetary authority implements a zero lower bound interest rate policy to examine whether the paradox of toil is present (i.e., whether a payroll tax cut policy is harmful to mitigating the effects of the Great Recession) during the zero lower bound period. Five notable findings emerge from the analysis. First, when the proportion of the rule-of-thumb (RoT) households is relatively small, the implementation of a payroll tax cut policy will further deepen the Great Recession. Second, when the proportion of RoT households is relatively large, the payroll tax cut policy can be a powerful policy instrument for alleviating the Great Recession. Third, as the evidence reveals a relatively large value of the proportion of RoT households in the U.S. (up to 30%), our numerical analysis calibrated to U.S. data demonstrates that the paradox of toil does not hold. Fourth, in association with either a lower profit share, a larger lump-sum tax share, a lower degree of price stickiness, or a higher probability of the shock remaining in its short run status, an additional payroll tax cut policy tends to generate a lower short-run output multiplier. Fifth, our extensions indicate that the validity of the paradox of toil is closely related to (i) the monopolistic profit and lump-sum tax distributions between RoT and optimizing households and (ii) whether the government balances its budget by levying lump-sum taxes or issuing government bonds.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)A comprehensive methodology for inference in vector autoregressions (VARs) using sign and other structural restrictions is developed. The reduced-form VAR disturbances are driven by a few common factors and structural identification restrictions can be incorporated in their loadings in the form of parametric restrictions. A Gibbs sampler is derived that allows for reduced-form parameters and structural restrictions to be sampled efficiently in one step. A key benefit of the proposed approach is that it allows for treating parameter estimation and structural inference as a joint problem. An additional benefit is that the methodology can scale to large VARs with multiple shocks, and it can be extended to accommodate non-linearities, asymmetries, and numerous other interesting empirical features. The excellent properties of the new algorithm for inference are explored using synthetic data experiments, and by revisiting the role of financial factors in economic fluctuations using identification based on sign restrictions.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022We investigate discounting behavior in situations where both intertemporal and social discounting occur simultaneously. Situations of intergenerational conflicts are characterized by both time delay and social distance and can be interpreted either as a combination of current donations with delegated investments for others or of current investments for one's own and future donations to others. Due to well-known self-control problems with respect to investments for one's own, the second interpretation implies overall higher discounting in intergenerational decision problems than the first one. We show experimentally that discounting in intergenerational decision-making indeed lies between the implications of these two interpretations so that self-control problems seem to be at work here as well. This problem can be mitigated by adequate framing supporting the first view of intergenerational decision problems described above. Our findings are relevant for policy makers and researchers alike.
Ait Lahcen M.Baughman G.Rabinovich S.van Buggenum H....
35页
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)Long-run inflation has nonlinear and state-dependent effects on unemployment, output, and welfare. We show this using a standard monetary search model with two shocks – productivity and monetary – and frictions in both labor and goods markets. Inflation lowers the surplus from a worker–firm match, in turn making it more sensitive to both productivity shocks and further increases in inflation. We calibrate the model to match key aspects of the US labor market and monetary data. The calibrated model is consistent with a number of empirical correlations, which we document using panel data from the OECD: (1) there is a positive long-run relationship between anticipated inflation and unemployment; (2) there is also a positive correlation between anticipated inflation and unemployment volatility; (3) the long-run inflation-unemployment relationship is stronger when unemployment is higher. The key mechanism through which the model generates these results is the negative effect of inflation on measured output per worker, which is likewise consistent with cross-country data. Finally, we show that the welfare cost of inflation is nonlinear in the level of inflation and is amplified by the presence of aggregate uncertainty.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022Although trade wars have existed throughout modern history, there is little empirical evidence as to how countries choose which products to target for retaliatory tariffs. We develop a political economy model of trade policy to explain a country's choice of product for retaliation and test the implications of this model using the choices of seven countries in two retaliation episodes: (1) the US imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018 and (2) the US passage of the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA) in 2000. The empirical results indicate that countries are more likely to sanction products with higher trade values and those in which they can extract terms-of-trade welfare, suggesting that trade wars move countries back to a terms-of-trade driven prisoner's dilemma equilibrium. We find a significant amount of heterogeneity in the degree to which countries consider the political importance of producers when developing their retaliation list; for example, only the EU and Canada targeted products produced in politically important locales in 2018.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier B.V.This paper examines the interaction between institutions and market size as drivers of economic development. I use the division of the Kingdom of Westphalia as a natural experiment to show that only reforms in both dimensions combined stimulated economic growth during the German industrial take-off. Homogeneous counties were allocated quasi-randomly to Prussia or the Electorate of Hesse as part of a package deal at the Congress of Vienna. In Prussian counties, Gewerbefreiheit (freedom of enterprise) and the abolition of guilds increased incentives to industrialise manufacturing production, yet these counties and those under the guild system developed similarly. Only the establishment of the German Zollverein (customs union), which increased market size considerably, enabled counties featuring the Gewerbefreiheit to experience significantly higher growth.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier B.V.I study monetary policy in an estimated financial New-Keynesian model extended by behavioral expectation formation in the asset market. Credit frictions create a feedback between asset markets and the macroeconomy, and behaviorally motivated speculation can amplify fundamental swings in asset prices, that potentially cause endogenous, nonfundamental bubbles and bursts. Booms in asset prices improve firms financing conditions and are therefore deflationary. These features significantly improve the power of the model to replicate empirical key moments. A monetary policy that targets asset prices can dampen financial cycles and reduce volatility in asset markets (dampening effect). This comes at the cost of creating an additional channel through which asset price fluctuations transmit to macroeconomic fundamentals (spillover effect). I find that unless financial markets are severely overheated, the undesirable fluctuations in inflation and output caused by the spillover effect more than outweigh the benefits of the dampening effect.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 The Author(s)We model competition between an oil monopolist and competitive suppliers of coal and renewable energy in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. We show that market power—which disrupts the order of extraction—may lead to higher long-run emissions by encouraging early extraction of dirty fuels such as coal which would otherwise remain in the ground permanently; simply banning coal burning may be better than Pigovian taxation. Market power can of course be corrected by production subsidies to the monopolist, but when distribution affects welfare a better option is to offer subsidies to renewable energy, which force the oil monopolist to reduce her (limit) price but are never actually paid out.
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