Under general conditions, a monetary policy of pegging the nominal rate of interest will make it possible for any adaptive learning mechanism that satisfies a weak and plausible condition to converge to rational expectations. Instead, under such a policy an economy will undergo a cumulative...

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects that follow from the introduction of what Bresnahan and Trajtenberg have called a "general-purpose technology" (GPT), such as the computer. The analysis is based on the idea that a new GPT accelerates the pace of technological change by spawning a...

Robert W. Clower has had a profound effect on the theory and practice of economics. The distinguished group of contributors to this book celebrates his seminal contribution to economic methodology and theory by providing key accounts of important themes in the area of money, markets and method.

We use an agent-based computational approach to show how inflation can worsen macroeconomic performance by disrupting the mechanism of exchange in a decentralized market economy. We find that increasing the trend rate of inflation above 3 percent has a substantial deleterious effect, but...

This paper revisits the relationship between health and growth in light of modern endogenous growth theory. We propose a unified framework that encompasses the growth effects of both, the accumulation and the level of health. Based on cross-country regressions where we instrument for both...

This paper revisits the relationship between health and growth in light of modern endogenous growth theory. We propose a unified framework that encompasses the growth effects of both the rate of improvement of health and the level of health. Based on cross-country regressions over the period...

This paper proposes and studies a theory of adaptive consumption behavior under income uncertainty and liquidity constraints. We assume that consumption is governed by a linear function of wealth, whose coefficients are revised each period by a procedure, which, although sophisticated, places...

How does firm entry affect innovation incentives in incumbent firms? Micro data suggest that there is heterogeneity across industries. Specifically, incumbent productivity growth and patenting is positively correlated with lagged greenfield foreign firm entry in technologically advanced...

In this lecture, we use Schumpeterian growth theory, where growth comes from quality-improving innovations, to elaborate a theory of growth policy and to explain the growth gap between Europe and the US. Our theoretical apparatus systematizes the case-by-case approach to growth policy design....