This paper analyzes the role of real exchange rate (RER) policies in promoting economic development. Markets provide a suboptimal amount of investment in sectors characterized by learning spillovers. We show that a stable and competitive RER policy may correct for this externality and other...

A significant amount of the increase in the wealth income ratio in recent decades is due to an increase in the value of land. We present a series of models that explain why land prices may have increased. These models help us understand the increase in both the wealth income ratio and wealth...

This paper extends the standard life cycle model to a world in which there are also capitalists. We obtain simple formulae describing the equilibrium fraction of wealth held by life-cycle savers. Using these formulae, we ascertain the effects of tax policy or changes in the parameters of the...

This paper investigates the determination of the equilibrium distribution of income and wealth among individuals within a simple equilibrium growth model, where there is consistency between the movements of aggregate variables and the savings, bequest, and reproduction behavior of individuals....

The paper identifies, and then resolves, a number of seeming puzzles in a newly identified set of stylized facts entailing movements in factor returns and shares and the wealth-income ratio. Standard data on savings cannot be reconciled with the increase in the wealth-income ratio: there is a...

Financial institutions form multi-layer networks of contracts among each other and exposures to common assets. As a result, the default probability of one institution depends on the default probability of all the other institutions in the network. Here, we show how small errors on the knowledge...

Weak creditor rights introduce contracting frictions and magnify conflicts of interest between borrowers and creditors. We examine the effects of creditor rights on the sensitivity of bank lending terms to aggregate relative to firm-specific information. We formulate two competing hypotheses. On...

Introductory lectures on capital theory often begin by analyzing the following problem: I have a tree which will be worth X(t) if cut down at time t. If the discount rate is r, when should the tree be cut down? What is the present value of such a tree? The answers to these questions are...