The NCAA college football ratings, in which the "so-called" national champion is determined, has been plagued by controversies the last few years. The difficulty arises because there is a need to make a complete ranking of teams even though each team has a different schedule of games with a...

In this paper, we employ both calibration and modern (Bayesian) estimation methods to assess the role of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks in generating fluctuations in hours. Using a neoclassical stochastic growth model, we show how answers are shaped by the identification...

The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the...

Trust in policy makers fluctuates significantly over the cycle and affects the transmission mechanism. Despite this it is absent from the literature. We build a monetary model embedding trust cycles; the latter emerge as an equilibrium phenomenon of a game-theoretic interaction between atomistic...

In this paper we propose a new way to formulate optimal policy based on a quadratic intertemporal welfare function where the dynamic constraint is based on a VAR model of the economy which we call the PVAR method. We argue that the VAR under control should not be derived simply by replacing the...

We study 30 vintages of FRB/US, the principal macro model used by the Federal Reserve Board staff for forecasting and policy analysis. To do this, we exploit archives of the model code, coefficients, baseline databases and stochastic shock sets stored after each FOMC meeting from the model’s...

This paper develops a theory of regular Markov perfect equilibria in dynamic stochastic games. We show that almost all dynamic stochastic games have a finite number of locally isolated Markov perfect equilibria that are all regular. These equilibria are essential and strongly stable. Moreover,...

We develop a continuous-time dynamic model with switching costs. In a relatively simple Markov Perfect equilibrium, the dominant firm concedes market share by charging higher prices than the smaller firm. In the short-run, switching costs might have two types of anti-competitive effects: first,...

Inflation-targeting central banks have only imperfect knowledge about the effect of policy decisions on inflation. An important source of uncertainty is the relationship between inflation and unemployment. This Paper studies the optimal monetary policy in the presence of uncertainty about the...