The author studies the implications for optimal portfolio decisions and equilibrium asset prices of the hypothesis that agents care about other agents' consumption level (in addition to their own). That hypothesis is introduced in two settings: (1) a one-period CAPM model and (2) a multiperiod...

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of...

We lay out an optimizing multicountry framework suitable for fiscal policy analysis in a monetary union. We show that, for any given member country, the relinquishment of monetary policy independence, coupled with nominal price rigidity, generates a motive for fiscal stabilization beyond the...

The standard neoclassical growth model is modified by introducing a market structure characterized by monopolistic competition and variable demand elasticities. In equilibrium, the price elasticity of the demand schedule facing a typical firm is a function of the aggregate savings rate. The...

We document three changes in postwar US macroeconomic dynamics: (i) the procyclicality of labor productivity has vanished, (ii) the relative volatility of employment has risen, and (iii) the relative (and absolute) volatility of the real wage has risen. We propose an explanation for all three...

We estimate a version of the Smets-Wouters model with unemployment.

Central banks’ projections– i.e. forecasts conditional on a given interest rate path– are often criticized on the grounds that their underlying policy assumptions are inconsistent with the existence of a unique equilibrium in many forward-looking models. The present paper describes three...

Unemployment in an Estimated New Keynesian model

We estimate the response of stock prices to exogenous monetary policy shocks using a vector-autoregressive model with time-varying parameters. Our evidence points to protracted episodes in which, after a short-run decline, stock prices increase persistently in response to an exogenous tightening...