Focusing on both micro and aggregate U.S. data, we show the existence of a significant link between aggregate uncertainty and reallocation of resources away from R&D-intensive capital. This link is important because a decrease in the aggregate share of R&D-oriented capital forecasts lower...

Allocation of capital, being a finite resource, needs to adopt a well calibrated approach to ensure that the targeted economic priorities are achieved in an optimal manner. Factor shares of income reflect the potential economic priorities more sharply than the overall output and the underlying...

The paper generalizes Feldstein's criticism (Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Social Security, 1976) of Barro's analysis (Are Government Bonds Real Net Wealth?, 1974) for the case that the interest rate exceeds the growth rate. This is done by considering an economy in steady state where all agents...

This paper focuses on the problems involved in developing cross-country comparisons of the intergenerational stance of fiscal policy. Of course, these comparisons are nowadays based on the method of generational accounting and in particular most of them rely on comparing the total size of...

This paper focuses on the observed empirical relationship between fiscal rules and budget deficits, and examines whether this correlation is driven by an omitted variable, namely voter preferences. We make use of two different estimation methods to capture voter preferences in a panel of Swiss...

We introduce a dynamic banking-macro model, which abstains from conventional mean-reversion assumptions and in which - similar to Brunnermeier and Sannikov (2010) - adverse asset-price movements and their impact on risk premia and credit spreads can induce instabilities in the banking sector. To...

We study the trading dynamics in an asset market where the quality of assets is private information of the owner and finding a counterparty takes time. When trading of a financial asset ceases in equilibrium as a response to an adverse shock to asset quality, a large player can resurrect the...

The aging of the populations in the OECD countries has prompted various calls for reforming the existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems. Currently, there is renewed discussion in the United States about partial privatization where a fraction of the social security payroll tax would be...

In this paper we study the link between elections, fiscal policy and aggregate fluctuations. The set-up is a stylized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model incorporating both technology and political re-election shocks. The later are incorporated via a two-party model with elections. The...

This paper proposes a new approach for analyzing the relationship between macroeconomic factors and the income distribution. The conventional method of analysis is regression of summary inequality indices on variables such as the unemployment and inflation rates. Building on the lessons from...