In this paper we propose a model that generates an expansion in response to good news about future total factor productivity (TFP) or investment-specific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and preferences that exhibit...

Currencies that are at a forward premium tend to depreciate. This `forward premium-depreciation anomaly' represents an egregious deviation from uncovered interest parity. We document the returns to currency speculation strategies that exploit this anomaly. The first strategy, known as the carry...

In this paper we investigate the consequences of demographic change for business cycle analysis. We find that changes in the age composition of the labor force account for a significant fraction of the variation in business cycle volatility observed in the US and other G7 economies. During the...

The main contribution of this work is to provide a dynamic general equilibrium model of asset allocation, allowing to reconcile economic theory with several puzzling contradictions recently pointed out in the literature: (i) the asset allocation puzzle, (ii) the observed time-variation in...

This paper studies optimal interest-rate policies when the central bank operates a channel system of interest-rate control. We conduct our analysis in a dynamic general equilibrium model with infinitely-lived agents who are subject to idiosyncratic trading shocks which generate random liquidity...

I construct a heterogeneous agents economy that mimics the time-series behavior of the US earnings distribution from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks driving the model using data on income inequality, on...

In a simple search model of money, we study a special kind of memory which gives rise to an arrangement resembling a payment network. Specifically, we assume that agents can choose to have access to a central data base which keeps track of payments made and received. We show that multiple...

I analyze how lack of commitment affects the maturity structure of sovereign debt. Ex post, the government trades off the gains from default induced redistribution against the cost of defaulting. Ex ante, the government issues debt of various maturities to raise an exogenous revenue requirement....

I analyze the implications of moral hazard in dynamic economy with production. In particular, I add agency frictions to a benchmark stochastic growth model, by assuming that firms observe output but hours worked and productivity are unobservable. I cast the problem as a continuous time principal...

We propose an approximation method for analyzing Ericson and Pakes (1995)-style dynamic models of imperfect competition. We develop a simple algorithm for computing an ``oblivious equilibrium,'' in which each firm is assumed to make decisions based only on its own state and knowledge of the long...