Several contributions have recently reconsidered the role of the time to build assumption in explaining some relevant stylized facts. In this paper, the similarities and differences which may emerge when the time to build structure of capital is introduced in a continuous or discrete time...

This article shows that the "risk premium" shock in Smets and Wouters (2007) can be interpreted as a structural shock to the demand for safe and liquid assets such as short-term US Treasury securities. Several implications of this interpretation are discussed.

Prior to 2020, the Great Recession was the most important macroeconomic shock to the United States economy in generations. Millions lost jobs and homes. At its peak, one in ten workers who wanted a job could not find one. On an annual basis, the economy contracted by more than it had since the...

Economic institutions determine prospects for growth and development. In this paper a condition on the primitives determines whether an economy supports institutions that implement markets. Agents differ in land holdings, skill, and power. A competitive market assigns land to the skilled, not...

Obtaining reliable data on capital is a recurring challenge when estimating economy-wide productivity growth, especially for developing countries. In this paper I construct energy-based productivity series which use energy consumption instead of capital when making such estimates. I first show...

Die Dynamik der Weltwirtschaft wird in den kommenden Monaten verhalten bleiben. Zwar sind die Ölpreise wieder gefallen, doch bestimmt die Abschwächung in den USA vorerst das weltwirtschaftliche Klima. Einer stärkeren Abkühlung wirkt im Euroraum die expansive Finanzpolitik entgegen. In...

Am 23. Oktober stellten die sechs Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute in Berlin ihr Herbstgutachten der Presse vor. Sie kommen zu der Ansicht, dass der Konjunkturabschwung durch die Terroranschläge verstärkt wurde. Mit einer Besserung ist erst im nächsten Jahr zu rechnen.

Am 23. April stellten die sechs Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute in Berlin ihr Frühjahrsgutachten der Presse vor. Sie kommen zu der Ansicht, dass die Weltwirtschaft vor einem Aufschwung steht. In den USA hat sich die Konjunktur sogar früher als von den Instituten erwartet belebt. In Westeuropa...

In the past sixty years, transistor sizes and weights have decreased by 50 percent every eighteen months, following Moore's Law. Smaller and lighter electronics have increased productivity in virtually every industry and spurred the creation of entirely new sectors of the economy. However, while...

This paper presents a simple North-South model of endogenous growth, based on learning by doing, which is consistent with the following empirical observations: (i) the price of investment goods relative to consumption goods has been falling for the last 40 years in most industrialized countries,...