Download or read book Microeconomic Heterogeneity and Macroeconomic Shocks written by Greg Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze the role of household heterogeneity for the response of the macroeconomy to aggregate shocks. After summarizing how macroeconomists have incorporated household heterogeneity and market incompleteness in the study of economic fluctuations so far, we outline an emerging framework that combines Heterogeneous Agents (HA) with nominal rigidities, as in New Keynesian (NK) models, that is much better aligned with the micro evidence on consumption behavior than its Representative Agent (RA) counterpart. By simulating consistently calibrated versions of HANK and RANK models, we convey two broad messages. First, the degree of equivalence between models crucially depends on the shock being analyzed. Second, certain interesting macroeconomic questions concerning economic fluctuations can only be addressed within HA models, and thus the addition of heterogeneity broadens the range of problems that can be studied by economists. We conclude by recognizing that the development of HANK models is still in its infancy and by indicating promising directions for future work.

Download or read book Microeconomic Heterigeneity and Macroeconomic Shocks written by Greg Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze the role of household heterogeneity for the response of the macroeconomy to aggregate shocks. After summarizing how macroeconomists have incorporated household heterogeneity and market incompleteness in the study of economic fluctuations so far, we outline an emerging framework that combines Heterogeneous Agents (HA) with nominal rigidities, as in New Keynesian (NK) models, that is much better aligned with the micro evidence on consumption behavior than its Representative Agent (RA) counterpart. By simulating consistently calibrated versions of HANK and RANK models, we convey two broad messages. First, the degree of equivalence between models crucially depends on the shock being analyzed. Second, certain interesting macroeconomic questions concerning economic fluctuations can only be addressed within HA models, and thus the addition of heterogeneity broadens the range of problems that can be studied by economists. We conclude by recognizing that the development of HANK models is still in its infancy and by indicating promising directions for future work.

Download or read book Firm Heterogeneity and the Macroeconomy written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three chapters of this thesis contribute to a literature which emphasizes the importance of microeconomic heterogeneity for macroeconomic outcomes. In my work I focus on firm heterogeneity. I investigate the US labor market implications of a drop in the number of new firms, study the cyclical effects on productivity due to limits in the reallocation of capital across firms, and quantify the effectiveness of a policy which attempted to save jobs in Germany by altering firm incentives for lay-offs. The first chapter of this thesis investigates the role of new firms ('start-ups') in the US labor market. Start-ups and young firms grow faster and create more net jobs than older, incumbent firms. Yet since 2007 the number of start-ups in the US has declined by over 20%, accounting for a large part of the persistently high unemployment rate. I claim that this fact is related to the unprecedented fall in the value of real estate. Based on the empirical evidence I construct a model that captures the idea that start-ups require external financing, for which real estate is used as collateral. I calibrate and compute a quantitative competitive industry model with endogenous entry and exit, firm heterogeneity, labor adjustment costs, and aggregate shocks. It generates a 'jobless recovery' similar to what we observed in the US in the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession and is able to explain over 80% of the increase and persistence in unemployment since the recession. The second chapter, joint work with Russell Cooper, studies the productivity implications of frictions in the reallocation of factors. Recent empirical work has shown that misallocation of factors can have sizeable effects on the levels of aggregate output and productivity. We are interested in the question whether these frictions can also produce important cyclical movements. We find that the effects are quantitatively important in the presence of fluctuations in adjustment frictions and/or the cross sectional variation of profitability shocks. These fluctuations depend on higher order moments of the joint distribution of capital and plant-level productivity rather than mean values alone. Even without aggregate productivity shocks, the model has quantitative properties that resemble those of a standard stochastic growth model and match important facts about the cyclicality of reallocation and firm productivity dispersion. The last chapter, joint work with Russell Cooper and Moritz Meyer, studies the employment and productivity implications of short-time work ('Kurzarbeit') in Germany. During the years 2009-10 this policy was intended to provide incentives for firms to adjust labor input by reducing hours per worker instead of firing workers. Using confidential German firm micro data we estimate a model of costly labor adjustment. We use the estimated model to simulate the effects of the policy during the recent recession, trying to quantify in how far the German short-time work scheme reduced the allocative efficiency of the German labor market.

Download or read book NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2017 written by Martin Eichenbaum and published by University of Chicago Press Journals. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 32 of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual features six theoretical and empirical studies of important issues in contemporary macroeconomics, and a keynote address by former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard. In one study, SeHyoun Ahn, Greg Kaplan, Benjamin Moll, Thomas Winberry, and Christian Wolf examine the dynamics of consumption expenditures in non-representative-agent macroeconomic models. In another, John Cochrane asks which macro models most naturally explain the post-financial-crisis macroeconomic environment, which is characterized by the co-existence of low and nonvolatile inflation rates, near-zero short-term interest rates, and an explosion in monetary aggregates. Manuel Adelino, Antoinette Schoar, and Felipe Severino examine the causes of the lending boom that precipitated the recent U.S. financial crisis and Great Recession. Steven Durlauf and Ananth Seshadri investigate whether increases in income inequality cause lower levels of economic mobility and opportunity. Charles Manski explores the formation of expectations, considering the efficacy of directly measuring beliefs through surveys as an alternative to making the assumption of rational expectations. In the final research paper, Efraim Benmelech and Nittai Bergman analyze the sharp declines in debt issuance and the evaporation of market liquidity that coincide with most financial crises. Blanchard’s keynote address discusses which distortions are central to understanding short-run macroeconomic fluctuations.

Download or read book Macroeconomic Factors and Micro Level Bank Risk written by Claudia M. Buch and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interplay between banks and the macroeconomy is of key importance for financial and economic stability. We analyze this link using a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) which extends a standard VAR for the U.S. macroeconomy. The model includes GDP growth, inflation, the Federal Funds rate, house price inflation, and a set of factors summarizing conditions in the banking sector. We use data of more than 1,500 commercial banks from the U.S. call reports to address the following questions. How are macroeconomic shocks transmitted to bank risk and other banking variables? What are the sources of bank heterogeneity, and what explains differences in individual banks' responses to macroeconomic shocks? Our paper has two main findings: (i) Average bank risk declines, and average bank lending increases following expansionary shocks. (ii) The heterogeneity of banks is characterized by idiosyncratic shocks and the asymmetric transmission of common shocks. Risk of about 1/3 of all banks rises in response to a monetary loosening. The lending response of small, illiquid, and domestic banks is relatively large, and risk of banks with a low degree of capitalization and a high exposure to real estate loans decreases relatively strongly after expansionary monetary policy shocks. Also, lending of larger banks increases less while risk of riskier and domestic banks reacts more in response to house price shocks.

Download or read book Macroeconomics and Household Heterogeneity written by Dirk Krueger and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this chapter is to study how, and by how much, household income, wealth, and preference heterogeneity amplify and propagate a macroeconomic shock. We focus on the U.S. Great Recession of 2007-2009 and proceed in two steps. First, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document the patterns of household income, consumption and wealth inequality before and during the Great Recession. We then investigate how households in different segments of the wealth distribution were affected by income declines, and how they changed their expenditures differentially during the aggregate downturn. Motivated by this evidence, we study several variants of a standard heterogeneous household model with aggregate shocks and an endogenous cross-sectional wealth distribution. Our key finding is that wealth inequality can significantly amplify the impact of an aggregate shock, and it does so if the distribution features a sufficiently large fraction of households with very little net worth that sharply increase their saving (i.e. they are not hand-to mouth) as the recession hits. We document that both these features are observed in the PSID. We also investigate the role that social insurance policies, such as unemployment insurance, play in shaping the cross-sectional income and wealth distribution, and through it, the dynamics of business cycles.

Download or read book Asset Prices and Monetary Policy written by John Y. Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic growth, low inflation, and financial stability are among the most important goals of policy makers, and central banks such as the Federal Reserve are key institutions for achieving these goals. In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, leading scholars and practitioners probe the interaction of central banks, asset markets, and the general economy to forge a new understanding of the challenges facing policy makers as they manage an increasingly complex economic system. The contributors examine how central bankers determine their policy prescriptions with reference to the fluctuating housing market, the balance of debt and credit, changing beliefs of investors, the level of commodity prices, and other factors. At a time when the public has never been more involved in stocks, retirement funds, and real estate investment, this insightful book will be useful to all those concerned with the current state of the economy.

Download or read book Income Distribution in Macroeconomic Models written by Giuseppe Bertola and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-28 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the distribution of income and wealth and the effects that this has on the macroeconomy, and vice versa. Is a more equal distribution of income beneficial or harmful for macroeconomic growth, and how does the distribution of wealth evolve in a market economy? Taking stock of results and methods developed in the context of the 1990s revival of growth theory, the authors focus on capital accumulation and long-run growth. They show how rigorous, optimization-based technical tools can be applied, beyond the representative-agent framework of analysis, to account for realistic market imperfections and for political-economic interactions. The treatment is thorough, yet accessible to students and nonspecialist economists, and it offers specialist readers a wide-ranging and innovative treatment of an increasingly important research field. The book follows a single analytical thread through a series of different growth models, allowing readers to appreciate their structure and crucial assumptions. This is particularly useful at a time when the literature on income distribution and growth has developed quickly and in several different directions, becoming difficult to overview.

Download or read book Microfoundations written by E. Roy Weintraub and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1979-02-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length survey of current work which examines the compatibility of microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Download or read book Heterogeneity in Macroeconomics and Its Implications for Monetary Policy written by Fabian Schnell and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fabian Schnell develops a model indicating that by keeping real interest rates too low, monetary policy can distort the allocation of resources across firms and potentially delay economic recovery after a recession. This is a new channel of monetary policy that is especially relevant in view of "Quantitative Easing" programs. A second model focuses on the short-term implications of heterogeneously productive firms, showing an acceleration effect of technology shocks. Finally, an empirical investigation of firms' price-setting behaviors shows that time-dependent factors, relative to state-dependent ones, play a small role with respect to the probability and the size of a price change. All results provide new insights for monetary policy. Contents Introduction: Heterogeneity and Macroeconomics Can Monetary Policy Delay the Reallocation of Capital? Business Cycles and Monetary Policy with Productivity Heterogeneity What Determines Price Changes and the Distribution of Prices? Evidence from the Swiss CPI Target Groups Researchers and students in macroeconomics Governmental institutions and central banks Managers of commercial banks, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks The Author Fabian Schnell, Ph.D., works as a research associate at the University of St. Gallen and as a project leader for economic policy at economiesuisse, the Swiss Business Federation.

Download or read book International Macroeconomics in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis written by Laurent Ferrara and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects selected articles addressing several currently debated issues in the field of international macroeconomics. They focus on the role of the central banks in the debate on how to come to terms with the long-term decline in productivity growth, insufficient aggregate demand, high economic uncertainty and growing inequalities following the global financial crisis. Central banks are of considerable importance in this debate since understanding the sluggishness of the recovery process as well as its implications for the natural interest rate are key to assessing output gaps and the monetary policy stance. The authors argue that a more dynamic domestic and external aggregate demand helps to raise the inflation rate, easing the constraint deriving from the zero lower bound and allowing monetary policy to depart from its current ultra-accommodative position. Beyond macroeconomic factors, the book also discusses a supportive financial environment as a precondition for the rebound of global economic activity, stressing that understanding capital flows is a prerequisite for economic-policy decisions.

Download or read book Essays on the Transmission of Economic Shocks written by Claire H. Hollweg and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis explores the transmission of economic shocks. Although the thesis is structured as four stand-alone chapters, the common theme throughout is identifying the impact of economic shocks: either idiosyncratic shocks at the household-level, macroeconomic shocks emanating from foreign countries and transmitted through global markets, or countries' own macroeconomic policy changes (for example, structural reforms or trade reforms). Each chapter applies a different empirical methodology, including structural estimation, reduced form instrumental variables estimation, and growth accounting. Finally, each chapter utilizes a different dataset and country sample selection. While one chapter uses a micro dataset from household-level surveys, others use cross-country datasets at the aggregate country level. Both developed and developing countries are considered in the analyses. The thesis begins by exploring the relationship between idiosyncratic income changes and consumption changes of Australian households over the period 2001-2009. A major contribution to the literature is the use of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics of Australia dataset that includes panels on both consumption and income data. For the entire sample of Australian households, nearly full consumption smoothing exists against transitory shocks. Although less consumption smoothing exists against permanent shocks, Australian households still achieve a high degree of consumption smoothing against highly persistent shocks, particularly when compared to households in the United States. Durable purchases, female labor supply, and taxes and transfers are all found to act as consumption-smoothing mechanisms. The thesis then explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive list of macro-level labor-market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, employment levels, average wage index, and labor force participation rates. After documenting the average trends across countries in the labor-market outcomes up to ten years on either side of each country's reform year, fixed-effects ordinary least squares as well as instrumental variables regressions are performed to account for likely endogeneity of structural reforms to labor-market outcomes. Overall the results suggest that structural reforms lead to positive outcomes for labor, particularly for informal workers. Redistributive effects in favor of workers, along the lines of the Stolper-Samuelson effect, may be at work. The thesis then explores the impact of trade liberalization on macroeconomic estimates of productivity using Brazil as a case study. Trade and economic reforms can affect the price of capital goods relative to other tradable and especially non-tradable goods. If the price of capital investments rises more than the price of all goods and services in the economy, mismeasurement of the price of capital caused by the divergence in these relative prices would result in an overestimated capital stock and underestimated TFP. This chapter overcomes this bias by constructing a capital price index using international trade data on capital goods' unit values then adjusts the index to reflect domestic Brazilian prices. A significant recovery between 1992 and 2006 is observed, highlighting the important role of the price deflator in growth accounting. The final chapter of this thesis proposes a methodology to measure the vulnerability of a country through exports to fluctuations in the economic activity of foreign markets. Export vulnerability depends first on the overall level of export exposure, measured as the share of exports to a foreign market in gross domestic product, and second on the sensitivity of exports to fluctuations in foreign gross domestic product. This sensitivity is captured by estimating origin-destination specific elasticities of exports with respect to changes in foreign gross domestic product using a gravity model of trade. Although the results suggest differences in elasticity estimates across regions as well as product categories, the principal source of international heterogeneity in export vulnerability results from differences in export exposure to global markets.

Download or read book Micro Heterogeneity and Macro Implications written by Soyoung Lee (Ph. D. in economics) and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these essays, I study quantitative macroeconomic theory with a focus on the macroeconomic implications of household and firm heterogeneity. My research is guided by analysis that begins with microeconomic data then tries to build equilibrium structural models to develop insights into the frictions and mechanisms behind these observations and their relevance for economic policy.

Download or read book Microeconomic Origins of Macroeconomic Tail Risks written by Daron Acemoglu and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We document that even though the normal distribution is a good approximation to the nature of aggregate fluctuations, it severely under-predicts the frequency of large economic downturns. We then provide a model that can explain these facts simultaneously. Our model show that the propagation of microeconomic shocks through input-output linkages can fundamentally reshape the distribution of aggregate output, increasing the likelihood of large downturns (macroeconomic tail risks) from infinitesimal to substantial. For example, an economy subject to thin-tailed micro shocks but with "unbalanced" input-output linkages (where some sectors or firms play a much more important role than others as inputs suppliers to the rest of the economy) may exhibit deep recessions as frequently as economies that are subject to heavy-tailed shocks. This is despite the fact that a central limit theorem-type result would imply that aggregate output is normally distributed. We characterize what types of input-output linkages and distributions of microeconomic shocks lead to sizable macroeconomic tail risks, and also show how the same economic forces cause the output of many sectors to simultaneously fall by large amounts. Keywords: Business cycles, macroeconomic tail risks, input-output linkages. JEL Classification: C67, E32.

Download or read book A History of Macroeconomics from Keynes to Lucas and Beyond written by Michel De Vroey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book retraces the history of macroeconomics from Keynes's General Theory to the present. Central to it is the contrast between a Keynesian era and a Lucasian - or dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) - era, each ruled by distinct methodological standards. In the Keynesian era, the book studies the following theories: Keynesian macroeconomics, monetarism, disequilibrium macro (Patinkin, Leijongufvud, and Clower) non-Walrasian equilibrium models, and first-generation new Keynesian models. Three stages are identified in the DSGE era: new classical macro (Lucas), RBC modelling, and second-generation new Keynesian modeling. The book also examines a few selected works aimed at presenting alternatives to Lucasian macro. While not eschewing analytical content, Michel De Vroey focuses on substantive assessments, and the models studied are presented in a pedagogical and vivid yet critical way.

Download or read book Handbook of Computational Economics written by Leigh Tesfatsion and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2006-05-15 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive growth in computational power over the past several decades offers new tools and opportunities for economists. This handbook volume surveys recent research on Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE), the computational study of economic processes modeled as dynamic systems of interacting agents. Empirical referents for "agents" in ACE models can range from individuals or social groups with learning capabilities to physical world features with no cognitive function. Topics covered include: learning; empirical validation; network economics; social dynamics; financial markets; innovation and technological change; organizations; market design; automated markets and trading agents; political economy; social-ecological systems; computational laboratory development; and general methodological issues. *Every volume contains contributions from leading researchers *Each Handbook presents an accurate, self-contained survey of a particular topic *The series provides comprehensive and accessible surveys

Download or read book Recursive Macroeconomic Theory written by Lars Ljungqvist and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 1120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A significant new edition of a text that offers both tools and sample applications; extensive revisions and seven new chapters improve and expand upon the original treatment.