Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Plant Heterogeneity written by Jinhee Woo and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The theme of this thesis is to understand the role of plant heterogeneity in shaping the dynamics of aggregate economy along business cycles. The first chapter investigates the cyclicality of plant entry and exit and its role in shaping the dynamics of aggregate economy along business cycles. The second chapter provides micro founded explanations regarding the dynamics of capital utilization in response to the news shock. The United States establishment exit rate is acyclical. This poses a challenge to canonical models of industry dynamics-e.g., Hopenhayn (1992), which imply a strongly counter-cyclical exit rate. To reconcile this gap between theory and data, imperfect information is introduced. Potential entrants have imperfect information about their productivity, leading to a signal extraction problem. When the volatility of idiosyncratic productivity dominates that of aggregate, as we observe in the micro data, potential entrants overestimate their productivity, and the value of entering, in booms. This amplified entry further increases factor prices and crowds out marginal incumbents, making the exit rate almost acyclical. The imperfect information mechanism proposed here also yields three testable implications: (i) entry is more cyclical in the industries where idiosyncratic components dominate; (ii) plant entry by new firms is more cyclical than that by existing firms; (iii) plants established by new firms during booms are more likely to exit rapidly. We show that all three predictions are consistent with the data. In the second chapter, by estimating a panel VAR on two-digit manufacturing data using the identification scheme proposed by Beadury and Portier (2006), I find positive co-movement between investment and capital utilization (the workweek of capital) in response to a news shock. This is inconsistent with the canonical q-theory model of capital adjustment dynamics where good news about the future raises the marginal value of capital and leads the firm to preserve its capital for later use through less utilization today. With fixed costs in capital adjustment, plants make discrete, or "lumpy", adjustments such that if plants are subject to decreasing returns, q declines as they near the point of investment. Since good news makes large investments more likely, this triggers a fall in q and reduces the opportunity cost of utilization. To simultaneously explain the co-movement of investment and capital utilization with plant level investment behavior, I propose a heterogeneous plant model that combines fixed adjustment costs and an endogenous capital utilization choice. When the model economy is calibrated to match salient features of the plant level investment rate distribution, it generates positive co-movement between investment and capital utilization."--Pages v-vi.

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics and Household Heterogeneity written by Isaac Gross and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Macroeconomics and Heterogeneity written by Christian Rörig and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics written by Ryan Douglas Edwards and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Regions written by Chang Liu and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies macroeconomics with regional heterogeneity in three general dimensions. First, it documents some novel empirical patterns of regional heterogeneity (in Chapter 1, 2, 3). Second, these empirical facts are used to identify key economic forces underlying theoretical models (in Chapter 1 and 3). Third, aggregate implications of regional heterogeneity are also studied (in Chapter 1). In the first chapter of this dissertation, I highlight time-varying regional risk and federal fiscal transfer policy as two competing forces driving regional risk sharing over the business cycle and in turn quantify their impacts on aggregate fluctuations. I find that during an economic downturn, increased regional risk worsens risk sharing and amplifies the impact of aggregate productivity shocks. However, state-contingent federal government transfers provide additional risk sharing and help stabilize the aggregate economy, by providing insurance to the regions that need it the most. In the second chapter (joint with Noah Williams), we first estimate a quarterly dataset for state-level aggregates by building a novel empirical framework that allows for mixed-frequency raw data with measurement errors. We then apply this dataset to study the monetary policy effects at the state levels. We find that states behave remarkably homogeneous with each other in their responses of output and price to an unanticipated monetary policy shock. In the third chapter (joint with Noah Williams), we use the state-level quarterly dataset to analyze the impact of unexpected changes in federal personal and corporate income taxes. We find substantial heterogeneity in the impact of federal fiscal policy across states, with more than half having no significant response to the tax cuts. In addition, less capital-intensive states have larger responses to corporate tax cuts. Although puzzling in standard models, a model with corporate and non-corporate sectors is consistent with this evidence. Overall, our results suggest the importance of variation and reallocation across states in evaluating federal policy.

Download or read book Three Essays on Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics written by Mohamed Diaby and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Heterogeneity and Inequality written by Zhigang Ge and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract Chapter 1. Heterogeneous Entrepreneurial Ability and Wealth Inequality Models with entrepreneurship can reproduce high wealth concentration at the top. The key assumption is the borrowing constraint, that is, households are unable to borrow enough assets to start a business or invest optimally in the business. However, some empirical evidences show that borrowing constraint does not matter for the majority of households in the US. This paper seeks to generate high wealth concentration at the top without assuming borrowing constraint. The baseline model that introduces heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is able to match the wealth distribution while the model assuming same entrepreneurial ability fails. Besides wealth distribution, the baseline model generates other moments that are consistent with the data. Chapter 2. Taxing Top Earners: The Role of Entrepreneurs This paper studies the optimal top marginal income tax rate in a quantitative framework with entrepreneurial choice, financing constraints, and realistic earnings and wealth distributions. I find that the revenue-maximizing top tax rate is approximately 41 percent -- close to the recent levels in the US. In contrast, when calibrated with only workers to match realistic earnings and wealth distributions, the model predicts a revenue-maximizing top tax rate of 81 percent -- close to the established view. There are two channels through which the baseline model has a lower revenue-maximizing top tax rate. First, the wealth distribution channel: increasing the top tax rate decreases wealth accumulation and leads to a less skewed wealth distribution in the long run (there are more top entrepreneurs with low wealth and less top entrepreneurs with high wealth). With financing constraints, there is a similar change in the business earnings distribution, implying a fall in the average business earnings at the top. Second, the general equilibrium effect on labor earnings of workers: in the model with entrepreneurs, increasing the top tax rate reduces the capital stock much more than labor supply, which decreases the capital-labor ratio and thus the equilibrium wage rate in the model economy. Finally, I find that the welfare-maximizing top marginal income tax rate is close to the revenue-maximizing one. Chapter 3. Household Heterogeneity and Consumption Amplification Macroeconomic models with household heterogeneity in wealth can generate larger consumption response to aggregate shocks compared to a representative-agent economy. In other words, there is consumption amplification associated with wealth heterogeneity. However, I find that in a Krusell-Smith type real business cycle (RBC) model, this amplification effect is only significant at the onset of a recession and gradually dies out as the recession proceeds. The finding is of interest because part of the motivation for the widely adoption of models with wealth heterogeneity is their different and empirically plausible implications for consumption dynamics compared with representative-agent models. I then introduce household heterogeneity in housing and find that the model with housing has more persistent amplification effect on consumption during the recession.

Download or read book Essays in Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Agents written by Pierre-Alexandre Noual and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation investigates two models of macroeconomics with heterogeneous agents. The first chapter analyzes a setup where agents are ex ante identical, yet receive idiosyncratic income shocks which make them heterogeneous ex post. A private information friction gives rise to incomplete risk-sharing as a constrained-efficient allocation. The second chapter again considers ex post heterogeneous agents: they have identical preferences but face idiosyncratic shocks to their earning capacity. There the focus is not on risk-sharing, but on the aggregate consequences for labor supply.

Download or read book Three Essays in Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Agents written by Ying Tung Chan and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis extends the macroeconomic theory with heterogeneous agents by taking account of heterogeneous households' interaction among themselves, in the form of comparing their consumptions or incomes, and by allowing heterogeneous firms to interact in a strategic fashion. In Chapter 2, I study how behavioral hypotheses such as the concern for status (relative consumption) and inequality aversion can lead to useful predictions about the evolution of wealth distribution and asset accumulation. Households are heterogeneous in terms of initial endowments and idiosyncratic shocks to their labor productivity. I propose a generalized concept of consumption externalities which include as special cases the concern for relative consumption, and preferences that display inequality aversion. In Chapter 3, I focus on interactions among heterogeneous firms in an oligopolistic framework. I assume that that the products offered by these firms are not perfect substitutes. More important, the degree of substitutability may vary across products within the industry. I offer a general formulation of industry structure such that monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition can be obtained as special cases. In Chapter 4, we study how preferences that display ambiguity aversion play a role in the job search process and affects the equilibrium rates of unemployment and vacancy. Ambiguity refers to the lack of information about probability distributions. The traditional job search model assumes that there are random matches between job seekers and firms (or vacancies), and the random draws have objective probability distributions that are known to both sides of the markets. We modify this model and assume that economic agents are uncertain about the underlying probability distributions. This chapter contributes to our understanding of how ambiguity aversion affects the unemployment rate and aggregate productivity." --

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Agents written by Min Fang (Economist) and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This dissertation consists of essays addressing the macroeconomic outcomes of heterogeneous agent general equilibrium models with micro-level frictions. Each chapter employs both empirical and quantitative macroeconomic methods. The first chapter studies the impact of elevated volatility on the effectiveness of monetary policy on aggregate investment under firm-level capital adjustment costs. I argue that monetary policy is less effective at stimulating investment during periods of elevated volatility in firm-level TFP than during normal times. Empirically, I document that high volatility weakens investment responses to monetary stimulus. I then develop a heterogeneous firm New Keynesian model with lumpy investment to interpret these findings. In the model, non-convex capital adjustment costs create a sizable extensive margin of investment which is more sensitive to changes in both interest rate and volatility than the intensive margin. When volatility is high, firms tend to stay inactive at the extensive margin, so monetary stimulus motivates less investment at the extensive margin. I find that the quantitative implications of the model are primarily shaped by the specifications of the capital adjustment costs. Unlike much of the prior literature, I use the dynamic moments of investment to identify this key model element. Based on this parameterization, high volatility reduces the effectiveness of monetary stimulus for investment by 30%. This reduction is about half of what I find in the data. Therefore, the effect of monetary policy depends on both the lumpy nature of firm-level investment and fluctuations in volatility. The second chapter studies the role of migration and housing constraints in determining income inequality within and across Chinese cities. Combining microdata and a spatial equilibrium model, we quantify the impact of the massive spatial reallocation of workers and the rapid growth of housing costs on the national income distribution. We first show several stylized facts detailing the strong positive correlation between migration inflows, housing costs, and imputed income inequality among Chinese cities. We then build a spatial equilibrium model featuring workers with heterogeneous skills, housing constraints, and heterogeneous returns from housing ownership to explain these facts. Our quantitative results indicate that the reductions in migration costs and the disproportionate growth in productivity across cities and skills result in the observed massive migration flows. Combining with the tight land supply policy in big cities, the expansion of the housing demand causes the rapid growth of housing costs, and enlarges the inequality between local housing owners and migrants. The counterfactual analysis shows that if we redistribute land supply increment by migrant flow and increase land supply toward cities with more migrants, we could lower the within-city income inequality by 14% and the national income inequality by 18%. Meanwhile, we can simultaneously encourage more migration into higher productivity cities"--Pages vii-viii.

Download or read book Essays on Growth Trade and Producer Heterogeneity written by Alfonso A. Irarrazabal and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Macroeconomics and International Economics written by Sang-Wook (Stanley) Cho and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Macroeconomics with Heterogeneous Agents and International Macro finance written by Uroš Herman and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of Heterogeneous Information written by Viadyanathan Venkateswaran and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in the Economics of Heterogeneity written by Laurent E. Calvet and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Heterogeneity written by Nils-Holger Gudat and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Public and Environmental Economics Household Heterogeneity and the Distributional Effects of Climate Policy written by Giacomo Schwarz and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: