This paper investigates whether the rate of interest such as the Treasury bill rate or the rate of return such as the return on a household portfolio is more relevant to the household's intertemporal decision making. In a current era, households are diversifiers (to use Tobin's 1958 term) and...

This paper computes an aggregate real after-tax rate of return on residential real estate in the United States. We account for net rental income, capital gain, and subsidies due to tax provisions for homeowners in constructing a total return measure. We also compute separate returns to owners...

We study how macroeconomic shocks affect U.S. public debt dynamics using a VAR with debt feedback. Following a fiscal austerity shock, the debt ratio initially declines and then returns to its pre-shock path. Yet, the effect is not statistically significant. In a weak economic environment, the...

Oil exporters have run large current account surpluses. We explore oil exporters'' role in our understanding and the resolution of global imbalances. Current account dynamics are estimated for oil-exporting countries and the rest of the world. We find that fiscal policy has a much stronger...

Recent technological developments and past technology transitions suggest that the worldcould be on the verge of a profound shift in transportation technology. The return of the electriccar and its adoption, like that of the motor vehicle in place of horses in early 20th century,could cut oil...

We shed new light on the determinants of growth by tackling the blunt and weak instrument problems in the empirical growth literature. As an instrument for each endogenous variable, we propose average values of the same variable in neighboring countries. This method has the advantage of...

We show empirical evidence that there may not be a tradeoff between market income inequality and high sustained growth, which is key for poverty alleviation. We argue that the economies that achieved high sustained growth and low market income inequality are characterized by dynamism-a drive...

The more a country saves, the less it invests as a share of saving. We build a “store-or-sow” model of growth with precautionary saving and investment to study the nonlinear relationship between investment and saving. We contend that income volatility is an important variable for explaining...

We study how macroeconomic shocks affect U.S. public debt dynamics using a VAR with debt feedback. Following a fiscal austerity shock, the debt ratio initially declines and then returns to its pre-shock path. Yet, the effect is not statistically significant. In a weak economic environment, the...

We study the effects of permanent and temporary income shocks on precautionary saving and investment in a "store-or-sow" model of growth. High volatility of permanent shocks results in high precautionary saving in the safe asset and low investment, or a "volatility trap." Namely, big savers...