Search Results
Working Paper
Asset pricing lessons for modeling business cycles
Working Paper
Habit persistence and asset returns in an exchange economy
We examine asset prices and returns in the context of a version of the pure exchange economy studied in Lucas (1978) and Mehra and Prescott (1985). Our purpose is to identify the key channels by which changes in preferences affect the equity premium and the risk free rate and to develop intuition that is useful for understanding asset pricing in more complicated economies. Our analysis suggests that capital gains play a crucial role in generating empirically plausible mean equity premia.
Working Paper
Habit persistence, asset returns and the business cycles
We introduce two modifications into the standard real business cycles model: habit persistence preferences and limitations on intersectoral mobility. The resulting model is consistent with the observed mean equity premium, mean risk free rate and Sharpe ration on equity. With respect to the conventional measures of business cycle volatility and comovement, the model does roughly as well as the standard real business cycle model. On four other dimensions its business cycle implications represent a substantial improvement. It accounts for (i) persistence in output, (ii) the observation that ...
Journal Article
What happened to the U.S. stock market? accounting for the past 50 years
The extreme volatility of stock market values has been the subject of a large body of literature. Previous research focused on the short run because of a widespread belief that in the long run the market reverts to well-established fundamentals. The authors' research suggests this belief should be questioned. First, they show actual dividends cannot account for the secular trends of stock market values. They then consider a more comprehensive measure of capital income, which displays large secular fluctuations that roughly coincide with changes in stock market trends. Under perfect foresight, ...
Journal Article
Reconstructing the Great Recession
This article uses dynamic equilibrium input-output models to evaluate the contribution of the construction sector to the Great Recession and the expansion preceeding it. Through production interlinkages and demand complementarities, shifts in housing demand can propagate to other economic sectors and generate a large and sustained aggregate cycle.
Working Paper
The case against patents
The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity. There is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences.
Working Paper
Reconstructing the great recession
This paper evaluates the role of the construction sector in accounting for the performance of the U.S. economy before, during and after the Great Recession. We use input-output analysis to evaluate its linkages with the rest of the economy and measure the transmission of its demand shocks to the overall economy. Such effects are quantified by means of a dynamic multi-sector model parameterized to reproduce the boom-bust dynamics of employment in construction during 2000-13. The model suggests that the interlinkages account for a large share of the actual changes in aggregate employment and ...
Working Paper
What happened to the US stock market? Accounting for the last 50 years
The extreme volatility of stock market values has been the subject of a large body of literature. Previous research focused on the short run because of a widespread belief that, in the long run, the market reverts to well understood fundamentals. Our work suggests this belief should be questioned as well. First, we show actual dividends cannot account for the secular trends of stock market values. We then consider a more comprehensive measure of capital income. This measure displays large secular fluctuations that roughly coincide with changes in stock market trends. Under perfect foresight, ...
Report
Perfectly competitive innovation
We construct a competitive model of innovation and growth under constant returns to scale. Previous models of growth under constant returns cannot model technological innovation. Current models of endogenous innovation rely on the interplay between increasing returns and monopolistic markets. In fact, established wisdom claims monopoly power to be instrumental for innovation and sees the nonrivalrous nature of ideas as a natural conduit to increasing returns. The results here challenge the positive description of previous models and the normative conclusion that monopoly through copyright and ...
Report
Factor saving innovation
We study a simple model of factor saving technological innovation in a concave framework. Capital can be used either to reproduce itself or, at additional cost, to produce a higher quality of capital that requires less labor input. If higher quality capital can be produced quickly, we get a model of exogenous balanced growth as a special case. If, however, higher quality capital can be produced slowly, we get a model of endogenous growth in which the growth rate of the economy and the rate of adoption of new technologies are determined by preferences, technology, and initial conditions. ...