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Conference Paper
Discretion, rules and volatility
Working Paper
Endogenous credit limits with small default costs
We analyze an exchange economy of unsecured credit where borrowers have the option to declare bankruptcy in which case they are temporarily excluded from financial markets. Endogenous credit limits are imposed that are just tight enough to prevent default. Economies with temporary exclusion differ from their permanent exclusion counterparts in two important properties. If households are extremely patient, then the first?best allocation is an equilibrium in the latter economies but not necessarily in the former. In addition, temporary exclusion permits multiple stationary equilibria, with both ...
Working Paper
The optimal inflation target in an economy with limited enforcement
We formulate the central bank?s problem of selecting an optimal long-run inflation rate as the choice of a distorting tax by a planner who wishes to maximize discounted stationary utility for a heterogeneous population of infinitely-lived households in an economy with constant aggregate income and public information. Households are segmented into cash agents, who store value in currency alone, and credit agents who have access to both currency and loans. The planner?s problem is equivalent to choosing inflation and nominal interest rates consistent with a resource constraint, and with an ...
Working Paper
Capital misallocation and aggregate factor productivity
We propose a sectoral?shift theory of aggregate factor productivity for a class of economies with AK technologies, limited loan enforcement, a constant production possibilities frontier, and finitely many sectors producing the same good. Both the growth rate and total factor productivity in these economies respond to random and persistent endogenous fluctuations in the sectoral distribution of physical capital which, in turn, responds to persistent and reversible exogenous shifts in relative sector productivities. Surplus capital from less productive sectors is lent to more productive ones in ...
Report
Complex eigenvalues and trend-reverting fluctuations
Autoregressions of quarterly or annual aggregate time series provide evidence of trend-reverting output growth and of short-term dynamic adjustment that appears to be governed by complex eigenvalues. This finding is at odds with the predictions of reasonably parameterized, convex one-sector growth models, most of which have positive real characteristic roots. We study a class of one-sector economies, overlapping generations with finite life spans of L greater than or equal to 3, in which aggregate saving depends nontrivially on the distribution of wealth among cohorts. If consumption goods ...
Working Paper
Capital misallocation and aggregate factor productivity
We propose a sectoral?shift theory of aggregate factor productivity for a class of economies with AK technologies, limited loan enforcement, and a constant production possibilities frontier. Both the growth rate and TFP respond to random and persistent endogenous fluctuations in the sectoral distribution of physical capital which, in turn, responds to reversible exogenous shifts in relative sector productivities. Surplus capital from less productive sectors is lent to more productive ones in the form of secured collateral loans, as in Kiyotaki?Moore (1997), and also as unsecured reputational ...
Working Paper
Self-fulfilling credit cycles
This paper argues that self-fulfilling beliefs in credit conditions can generate endoge- nously persistent business cycle dynamics. We develop a tractable dynamic general equi- librium model in which heterogeneous firms face idiosyncratic productivity shocks. Capital from less productive firms is lent to more productive ones in the form of credit secured by collateral and also as unsecured credit based on reputation. A dynamic complemen- tarity between current and future credit constraints permits uncorrelated sunspot shocks to trigger persistent aggregate fluctuations in debt, factor ...
Working Paper
The optimal inflation target in an economy with limited enforcement
We formulate the central bank's problem of selecting an optimal long-run inflation rate as the choice of a distorting tax by a planner who wishes to maximize discounted utility for a heterogeneous population of infinitely-lived households in an economy with constant aggregate income. Households are divided into cash agents, who store value in currency alone, and credit agents who have access to both currency and loans. The planner's problem is equivalent to choosing inflation and nominal rates consistent with a resource constraint along with an incentive constraint that ensures credit agents ...
Working Paper
Earnings and wealth inequality and income taxation: quantifying the tradeoffs of switching to a proportional income tax in the U.S.
This paper quantifies the steady-state aggregate, distributional, and mobility effects of switching the U.S. to a proportional income tax system.
Working Paper
Trend-reverting fluctuations in the life-cycle model
Aggregate time series provide evidence of short term dynamic adjustment that appears to be governed by complex or negative real eigenvalues. This finding is at odds with the predictions of reasonably parameterized, convex one-sector growth models with complete markets. We study life cycle economies in which aggregate saving depends non-trivially on the distribution of wealth among cohorts. If consumption goods are weak gross substitutes near the steady state price vector, we prove that the unique equilibrium of a life cycle exchange economy converges to the unique non-monetary steady state ...