This paper explores the relationship between volatility and welfare. Even though households prefer smooth streams of consumption and leisure, welfare can be increasing in the volatility of an exogenous driving force if factor supply is sufficiently elastic. We provide some analytical results for...

An extensive literature has analyzed the implications of hidden shifts in the dividend growth rate. However, corresponding research on learning about growth persistence is completely lacking. Hidden persistence is a novel way to introduce long-run risk into standard business-cycle models of...

We contribute to a recent literature on the normalization, calibration and estimation of CES production functions. The problem arises because CES ‘share’ parameters are not in fact shares, but depend on underlying dimensions—in other words they are ‘dimensional constants’. It follows...

This paper investigates the properties of distortions that manifest themselves as wedges in the equilibrium conditions of the neoclassical growth model across a sample of 22 OECD countries for the 1970–2011 period. The quantitative relevance of each wedge and its robustness in generating...

This paper develops and estimates a stochastic general equilibrium model with capital maintenance, which affects endogenously the depreciation rate of capital. The estimate of maintenance series is found to track survey-based measures for Canada quite closely and to generate the procyclical...

We study the impact of two-sided nominal shocks in a dynamic, equilibrium macroeconomic model. Goods complementarity differs across sectors as do the costs of changing prices. Even when strategic complementarities are equal across the sectors, the systematic differences in costs of price...

This paper explores the link between the leverage of the US financial sector, of households and of non-financial businesses, and real activity. We document that leverage is negatively correlated with the future growth of real activity, and positively linked to the conditional volatility of...

The availability of data corresponding to the products exported by all countries provides an excellent dataset to test economic ideas and extracts new information about the process of economic development. The matrix of countries and exported products shows a marked triangular structure instead...

This paper investigates the relationship between geographic patterns of industry and economic growth in a two-country model of trade with no scale effect, where productivity growth is generated by firm investment in process innovation. We find that dispersed equilibria with industry located in...

This study examines whether central bank transparency about views of future productivity growth contributes to stabilizing macroeconomic fluctuations. In a standard New Keynesian model, the central bank and private agents make their subjective estimates on the persistence of productivity growth....