The consumer has been on a tightrope since the bursting of the "new economy" bubble, as losses in equity markets have been partly offset by gains in real estate and fiscal support and mortgage refinancing have partly offset increased consumer cautiousness. The consumer will remain on a tightrope...

This paper shows that there are striking implications that stem from including durable goods in otherwise conventional sticky price models. The behavior of these models depends heavily on whether durable goods are present and whether these goods have sticky prices. If long-lived durables have...

We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income, to evaluate the nature of increased income inequality in the 1980s and 90s. We decompose unexpected changes in family income into transitory and permanent, and idiosyncratic and aggregate components, and estimate the contribution...

I explore the dynamics in overlapping generations models with pure exchange and lump-sum taxes, when the second period after tax endowment is negative, and contrast the characteristics of equilibria to those of models with positive after tax endowments. In particular, if the intertemporal...

This paper investigates the dynamics of output, employment and prices in an economy with costs of adjusting labor and prices. In an economy with non convex adjustments costs, firms do not adjust labor and prices continuously to accommodate every shift in demand. Rather, firms adjust employment...

Much research on the dynamics of the aggregate economy concerns the adjustment policy of the microeconomic units. This paper investigates the optimal adjustment policy when there are seasonal fluctuations and fixed adjustment costs. The optimal policy in this case can be described in terms of...

This paper investigates the effect of a positive technology shock on per capita hours worked within the class of Bayesian Vector Auto-Regressive [BVAR] models. Such a framework avoids the current debate regarding the specification issue of per capita hours [level versus first-difference...

This paper extends the standard Real Business Cycle model to incorporate sectoral shifts in unemployment. Using relative sectoral technology and sectoral tastes shocks, combined with labor adjustment costs across sectors, we assess the possibility of generating persistent aggregate unemployment....

The cyclical behavior of hours worked, wages, and consumption does not conform with the prediction of the representative agent with standard preferences. The residual in the intra-temporal first-order condition for commodity consumption and leisure is often viewed as a failure of labor-market...

We reformulate and extend the standard AS-AD growth model of the Neoclassical Synthesis (Stage I) with its traditional microfoundations. The model still has an LM curve in the place of a Taylor interest rate rule, exhibits sticky wages as well as sticky prices, myopic perfect foresight of...