The Fed closely monitors the stock market and the stock market continuously forms expectations about the Fed decisions. What does this imply for the relation between the fed funds rate and the S&P500? We find that the answer depends on the conditions prevailing on the financial market. During...

The New-Keynesian Phillips curve plays a central role in modern macroeconomic theory. A vast empirical literature has estimated this structural relationship over various postwar full-samples. While it is well know that in a New-Keynesian model a `weak' central bank response to inflation...

We consider American versions of multiple asset options when the underlying assets follow jump-diffusion processes, for example exchange options and max-options. We consider various representations of the option value and in particular apply Fourier transform techniques to the integro-partial...

This paper makes use of an adaptive agent framework to extend traditional models of comparative advantage in international trade, illustrating several cases which make theoretical room for industrial policy and the regulation of trade. Using an agent based implementation of the Hecksher-Ohlin...

In a series of papers, Schelling presented a microeconomic model of neighbourhood segregation that he called a "spatial proximity model". The model specifies a spatial setup in which the individual agents care only about the composition of their own local neighbourhood. Agents belong to two...

Many recent papers, following Gali (1999), have found a negative response of employment to a positive technology shock identified as a permanent shock to labor productivity, contradicting the prediction of standard RBC models. In a recent paper, Christiano, Eichenbaum and Vigfusson (2003) get a...

Unstable government debt dynamics can typically be corrected by various fiscal instruments, like appropriate adjustments in government spending, public transfers, or taxes. This paper investigates properties of state-contingent debt targeting rules which link stabilizing budgetary adjustments...

The problem of choosing optimal investment and consumption strategies has been widely studied. In continuous time theory the pioneering work by Merton (1969) is a standard reference. In his work, Merton studied a continuous time economy with constant investment opportunities. Since then Merton's...

While tests for unit roots and cointegration have important econometric and economic implications, they do not always offer conclusive results. For example, Rudebusch (1992; 1993) demonstrates that standard unit root tests have low power against estimated trend stationary alternatives. In addition,...

Over the past decade, questions over the impact of new information technologies on productivity growth trends have played an important role in the formulation of monetary policy, particularly in the United States and Canada. However, formal testing of whether the trend growth rate of aggregate...