We construct an optimizing-agent model of a closed economy which is simple enough that we can use it to make exact utility calculations. There is a stabilization problem because there are one-period nominal contracts for wages, or prices, or both and shocks that are unknown at the time when...

This paper, following Kaldor's approach, is written with the intention of interpreting fluctuations of economic systems (i.e trade cycles). In particular, a new discretized Kaldor model is proposed, which is also useful to explain what appears to be random and unpredictable, such as economic...

In this paper, I examine the welfare consequences of conventional approximation methods in business cycle analysis: the log-linear approximation of model dynamics and the second-order approximation of social welfare. In a canonical New Keynesian model, the approximation around the deterministic...

A divide and conquer algorithm for exploiting policy function monotonicity is proposed and analyzed. To solve a discrete problem with n states and n choices, the algorithm requires at most n log2(n) 5n objective function evaluations. In contrast, existing methods for non-concave problems require...

We propose a simple risk-adjusted linear approximation to solve a large class of dynamic models with time-varying and non-Gaussian risk. Our approach generalizes lognormal affine approximations commonly used in the macro-finance literature and can be seen as a first-order perturbation around the...

Structural estimation of macroeconomic models and new HANK-type models with extremely high dimensionality require fast and robust methods to efficiently deal with occasionally binding constraints (OBCs). This paper proposes a novel algorithm that solves for the perfect foresight path of...

This paper evaluates the accuracy of a set of techniques that approximate the solution of continuous-time DSGE models. Using the neoclassical growth model I compare linear-quadratic, perturbation and projection methods. All techniques are applied to the HJB equation and the optimality conditions...