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Report
An Aggregate Model for Policy Analysis with Demographic Change
Prescott, Edward C.; McGrattan, Ellen R. (2016-08-11)
Many countries are facing challenging fiscal financing issues as their populations age and the number of workers per retiree falls. Policymakers need transparent and robust analyses of alternative policies to deal with demographic changes. In this paper, we propose a simple framework that can easily be matched to aggregate data from the national accounts. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework by comparing quantitative results for our aggregate model with those of a related model that includes within-age-cohort heterogeneity through productivity differences. When we assess proposals ...
Staff Report , Paper 534

Working Paper
Technology adoption, mortality and population dynamics
Hejkal, John P.; Vandenbroucke, Guillaume; Ravikumar, B. (2021-05)
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality trends and population dynamics. Our theory emphasizes individual choices on costly adoption of healthy technologies and diffusion of knowledge about infections as a key channel for reducing mortality. Our theory is consistent with three observations on mortality: (i) The cross-country correlation between levels of mortality and income is negative; (ii) mortality in poor countries has converged to that of rich countries despite no convergence in income; and (iii) economic growth is not a prerequisite for mortality to decline. We calibrate our model ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-039

Working Paper
Technology Adoption, Mortality, and Population Dynamics
Hejkal, John P.; Vandenbroucke, Guillaume; Ravikumar, B. (2024-02)
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics. We emphasize individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Adoption becomes cheaper as more individuals use better technology. It also confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the better technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-039

Working Paper
Are Government Bonds Net Wealth or a Liability? ---Optimal Debt and Taxes in an OLG Model with Uninsurable Income Risk
Chien, YiLi; Wen, Yi; Wu, HsinJung (2020-04-08)
The rapidly growing national debt in the U.S. since the 1970s has alarmed and intrigued the academic world. Consequently, the concept of dynamic (in)efficiency in an overlapping generations (OLG) world and the importance of the heterogeneous-agents and incomplete markets (HAIM) hypothesis to justify a high debt-to-GDP ratio have been extensively studied. Two important consensus emerge from this literature: (i) The optimal quantity of public debt is positive—due to insufficient private liquidity to support private saving and investment (see, e.g., Barro (1974), Woodford (1990), and Aiyagari ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-007

Working Paper
Revisiting Capital-Skill Complementarity, Inequality, and Labor Share
Orak, Musa; Shen, Shihan; Ohanian, Lee E. (2021-05-19)
This paper revisits capital-skill complementarity and inequality, as in Krusell, Ohanian, Rios-Rull and Violante (KORV, 2000). Using their methodology, we study how well the KORV model accounts for more recent data, including the large changes in the labor's share of income that were not present in KORV. We study both labor share of gross income (as in KORV), and income net of depreciation. We also use nonfarm business sector output as an alternative measure of production to real GDP. We find strong evidence for continued capital-skill complementarity in the most recent data, and we also find ...
International Finance Discussion Papers , Paper 1319

Working Paper
Technology adoption, mortality, and population dynamics
Hejkal, John P.; Vandenbroucke, Guillaume; Ravikumar, B. (2024-07)
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality and population dynamics. We emphasize individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting better health technology. Adoption becomes cheaper as more individuals use better technology. It also confers a dynamic externality by increasing the future number of individuals who use the better technology. Our model generates a diffusion curve whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction. The model explains historical trends in mortality rates and life expectancies at various ages and population dynamics in Western Europe. Unlike ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-039

Working Paper
Interpreting Shocks to the Relative Price of Investment with a Two-Sector Model
Guerrieri, Luca; Henderson, Dale W.; Kim, Jinill (2016-02-08)
Consumption and investment comove over the business cycle in response to shocks that permanently move the price of investment. The interpretation of these shocks has relied on standard one-sector models or on models with two or more sectors that can be aggregated. However, the same interpretation continues to go through in models that cannot be aggregated into a standard one-sector model. Furthermore, such a two-sector model with distinct factor input shares across production sectors and commingling of sectoral outputs in the assembly of final consumption and investment goods, in line with ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2016-7

Report
Sweat Equity in U.S. Private Business
Bhandari, Anmol; McGrattan, Ellen R. (2017-11-20)
This paper uses theory disciplined by U.S. national accounts and business census data to measure private business sweat equity, which is the value of time to build customer bases, client lists, and other intangible assets. We estimate an aggregate sweat equity value of 0.65 times GDP, with little cross-sectional dispersion in valuations when compared to business net incomes and large cross-sectional dispersion in rates of return. Our estimate of sweat equity is close to the estimate of marketable fixed assets used in production by private businesses, implying a high ratio of intangible to ...
Staff Report , Paper 560

Report
A Reassessment of Real Business Cycle Theory
Prescott, Edward C.; McGrattan, Ellen R. (2014-01-09)
During the downturn of 2008?2009, output and hours fell significantly, but labor productivity rose. These facts have led many to conclude that there is a significant deviation between observations and current macrotheories that assume business cycles are driven, at least in part, by fluctuations in total factor productivities of firms. We show that once investment in intangible capital is included in the analysis, there is no inconsistency. Measured labor productivity rises if the fall in output is underestimated; this occurs when there are large unmeasured intangible investments. ...
Staff Report , Paper 494

Working Paper
Technology Adoption, Mortality, and Population Dynamics
Hejkal, John P.; Vandenbroucke, Guillaume; Ravikumar, B. (2022-02)
We develop a quantitative theory of mortality trends and population dynamics. We emphasize diseases as causes of death and individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting, at some cost, a modern health-related technology. Adoption confers a dynamic externality: Adoption becomes cheaper as more individuals acquire the modern technology. Our model generates an S-shaped diffusion curve, whose shape dictates the pace of mortality reduction in each country. We use the model to explain the gradual decline of mortality in Western Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as the ...
Working Papers , Paper 2020-039

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