This paper integrates the literature of Mortgage Design with that of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) to present a novel way of mortgage financing (with a zero interest rate) using cooperatives. This mode of financing dissipates credit (default) risk better than the normal mode...

Dynamic models with inequality constraints pose a challenging prob- lem for two major reasons: Dynamic Programming techniques often necessitate a non established differentiability of the value function, while Euler equation based techniques have problematic or unknown convergence properties....

We introduce a ''new'' algorithm that can be used to solve stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models. This approach exploits the fact that the equations defining equilibrium can be viewed as set of algebraic equations in the neighborhood of the steady-state. Then a recursive scheme, which...

The lion’s share of hidden Markov models (HMMs) /Markov regime switching models considered in economic research incorporates a comparably small number of states. The popularity of models with mostly two or three states principally results from their good interpretability: often regime...

This paper examines the effect on economic growth and welfare of the access to external financing which results in technological transfers to a developing country from the rest of the world. We consider a two-sector stochastic growth model and compute optimal accumulation mechanisms in the...

The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is one of the most investigated questions in Finance. Nevertheless, it is still a puzzle, despite the enormous amount of research it has provoked. For instance, it is still discussed that market cannot be outperformed in the long run (Detry and Gregoire,...

DSGE models are customarily built in the presence of uncertainties of various levels, such as the specification of behavioural equations of economic agents, the actual values of model parameters, and so on. When the degree of complexity of the model structure and its parameterization increases,...

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based stochastic optimization technique. PSO is similar to optimization with Genetic Algorithms (GA). In PSO, the potential solutions (particles) move through the problem space by following the current optimum particles. Experience shows that PSO...

In the standard models of North-South technological-knowledge diffusion, the larger the initial technological-knowledge gap between countries is, the higher the Southern catching up. However, this result does not adjust well to Southern reality as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to...

The problem of convexity runs deeply in economic theory. For example, increasing returns or upward slopes (convexity) and diminishing returns or downward slopes (concavity) of certain supply, demand, production and utility relations are often assumed in economics. Quite frequently, however, the...