This paper explores the implications of time varying volatility for optimal monetary policy and the measurement of welfare costs. We show how macroeconomic models with linear and quadratic state dependence in their variance structure can be used for the analysis of optimal policy within the...

This paper analyses how product differentiation affects the volume of trade under duopoly using Shubik-Levitan demand functions rather than the Bowley demand functions used by Bernhofen (2001). The Shubik-Levitan demand functions have the advantage that an increase in product differentiation...

The Generalized Calvo and the Generalized Taylor models of price and wage-setting are, unlike the standard Calvo and Taylor counterparts, exactly consistent with the distribution of durations observed in the data. Using price and wage micro-data from a major euro-area economy (France), we...

Using a version of the Smets-Wouters model of the US economy augmented to include both New Keynesian and New Classical sectors, this paper investigates the performance of inflation targeting and price-level targeting when the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is occasionally-binding....

A positive joint two-sector productivity shock causes Rybczynski (1955) and Stolper and Samuelson (1941) effects that release leisure time and initially raises the relative price of human capital investment so as to favor it over goods production. This enables a basic RBC model, modified by...

This paper extends Nolan and Thoenissen (2009), hence NT, model with an explicit financial intermediary that transfer funds from households to entrepreneurs subject to a well defined loan production function. The loan productivity shock is treated as the supply side financial disturbance....

We test for fiscal policy sustainability in the UK for the period 1955-2006. We find evidence of sustainability with three structural breaks, respectively occurring in the early 1970s, early 1980s and late 1990s. UK fiscal policy has been sustainable throughout the sample period except from...

Limited empirical work has been done to the diverging current account balances of the individual emerging Asian economies. Based on the intertemporal approach to current account, this paper empirically examines both the long-run and short-run impacts of initial stock of net foreign assets,...

This paper investigates the long-term impact of price-level targeting on social welfare in an overlapping generations model in which the young save for old age by investing in productive capital and indexed and nominal government bonds. A key feature of the model is that the extent of bond...

We examine the optimal taxation problem in a two sector neoclassical economy with workers and capitalists. We show that in a steady state of this economy the optimal policy may involve a capital income tax or subsidy, differential taxation of labour income and redistribution. The level and the...