Search Results
Journal Article
Corruption and innovation
In this article, the author illustrates how corruption can affect an industry's rate of innovation. An interesting result of analysis is that, under certain parameter ranges, small increases in the penalties to corruption or the effectiveness of detection can result in large increases in product innovation.
Working Paper
Plant level irreversible investment and equilibrium business cycles
This paper evaluates the importance of microeconomic irreversibilities for aggregate dynamics using a general equilibrium approach. To this end a real business cycle model of establishment level dynamics is formulated and analyzed. Investments decisions are subject to irreversibility constraints and consequently, are of the (S,s) variety. This complicates the analysis since the state of the economy is described by an endogenous distribution of agents. The paper develops a computational strategy that makes this class of (S,s) economies fully tractable. Contrary to what the previous literature ...
Working Paper
What are the short-run effects of increasing labor market flexibility?
This paper evaluates the short-run effects of introducing labor market flexibility to an economy characterized by large firing taxes. Different reforms are considered: 1) eliminating all firing taxes, 2) introducing flexible new contracts while retaining the firing taxes on workers employed previous to the reform, and 3) introducing temporary contracts. The paper finds that eliminating all firing taxes increases the unemployment rate much more in the short run than in the long run, that introducing new flexible contracts has similar effects as eliminating all firing taxes, and that ...
Journal Article
A Simple Model of Gross Worker Flows across Labor Market States
The author develops a simple model of the gross flows of workers across labor market states that is based on Krusell et al. (2012). Its simplicity allows for analytical derivations that make the determination of these flows transparent. Moreover, he finds that if errors in the classification of agents? labor market states are introduced and allowed to vary over time, the model has the ability to generate business cycle dynamics similar to those observed in the U.S. data. However, its dynamics are driven essentially by exogenous factors, not endogenous ones.
Working Paper
Search, self-insurance and job-security provisions
We construct a general equilibrium model to evaluate the quantitative effects of severance payments in the presence of contracting and reallocational frictions. Key elements of the model are: 1) establishment level dynamics, 2) imperfect insurance markets, and 3) variable search decisions. Contrary to previous studies that analyzed severance payments in frictionless environments, we find that severance payments reduce unemployment, produce negative insurance effects and improve levels.
Journal Article
Dollarization in Argentina
Several countries are seriously considering the abandonment of their currency and its formal replacement with the U.S. dollar. Since 1991, Argentina has backed its currency with 100 percent reserves and successfully pegged it to the dollar. In doing so, it has already grappled with many issues that confront would-be adopters of the dollar. Moving to full-fledged dollarization might offer a solution to recurring crises that are partly driven by expectations that Argentina might abandon its peg.
Journal Article
Worker flows and matching efficiency
Although job vacancies have increased quite significantly since mid-2009, the unemployment rate has not declined significantly. This article analyzes the matching efficiency of jobs and workers in U.S. labor markets and its impact on the behavior of the unemployment rate and other labor market outcomes since the start of the latest recession.
Working Paper
Business Cycle Fluctuations in Mirrlees Economies: The case of i.i.d. shocks​
I consider a real business cycle model in which agents have private information about the i.i.d. realizations of their value of leisure. For the case of logarithmic preferences I provide an analytical characterization of the solution to the associated mechanism design problem. Moreover, I show a striking irrelevance result: That the stationary behavior of all aggregate variables are exactly the same in the private information economy as in the full information case. Numerical simulations indicate that the irrelevance result approximately holds for more general CRRA preferences.
Journal Article
Seasonal monetary policy