The federal funds rate is featured by frequent, small changes in the same direction and infrequent reversals. How to replicate the observed smooth behavior of the federal funds rate with a small scale macroeconomic model? This paper compares the descriptive performance of an empirical fully...

We extend and test two models of asset pricing that feature status-seeking through accumulation of not only financial and real assets but also human capital. We use weak-identification robust tests to confront these models with U.S. aggregate data. Contrary to previous results, we find that the...

We construct an overlapping generations model to study the effect of capital controls on human capital investments and the incidence of redistributive taxation in a growing economy. We argue that the conventional wisdom linking higher capital controls to lower growth is reproduced only when an...

Factor-augmented VARs (FAVARs) have combined standard VARs with factor analysis to exploit large data sets in the study of monetary policy. FAVARs enjoy a number of advantages over VARs: they allow a better identification of the monetary policy shock; they avoid the use of a single variable to...

This paper estimates a standard version of the New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model under alternative specifications of the monetary policy rule using U.S. and Eurozone data. The estimation procedure implemented is a classical method based on the indirect inference principle. An unrestricted VAR...

Multi-product firms dominate production activity in the global economy. There is widespread evidence showing that large corporations improve their efficiency by increasing the scale of their operations; this objective can be realized either by consistently investing in R&D or by expanding the...

The U.S. trade deficit with China exceeded $200 billion in 2005. Many blame these imbalances on the value of the renminbi. This paper investigates how an appreciation of the RMB would affect the U.S. trade balance with China. Johansen MLE and dynamic OLS results indicate that the long run real...

Several European countries adopted inflation targeting as a monetary policy strategy during the 1990s. This article evaluates the impact of the establishment of this policy framework on the dynamics of inflation for three countries: United Kingdom, Spain and Finland. While smaller shocks...

Using levels of democratic development as a proxy for economic development, and using a 2SLS GMM dynamic panel estimation methodology, we investigate the degree and direction of dissemination in the volatility of economic growth. Our findings indicate two essential points. First, there are...

Search models with wage posting and match-specific heterogeneity generate wage dispersion. Given K values for the match-specific variable, it is known that there are K reservation wages that could be posted, but generically never more than two actually are posted in equilibrium. What is unknown...