From its publication in The Times in 1933, John Maynard Keynes’s investment multiplier sparked much debate and controversy. Can an investment generate 3 or 4 times its value in income within one year? To date, no one has questioned the theoretical merits of this multiplier. Even the biggest...

The two Cambridge controversy have marked a milestone in economic thinking. By their demonstration neo-Ricardian and post-Keynesian seemed to have proven the impossibility of defining the notion of Capital and, moreover, of being able to aggregate heterogeneous Capital. It is not so.By reasoning...

This paper presents an empirical investigation of the role of credit in the post-stabilization consumption booms of Mexico, Chile and Israel. Credit from the banking sector to the private sector expanded very rapidly following the stabilizations. I show that this increase in credit reduced the...

Most of empirical studies find evidence of the J-Curve, but recent results cast doubt over its standard explanation. By addressing the countercyclicality of the current account and its dynamic link with the terms of trade, this paper revisits the J-Curve phenomenon using a two-good dynamic...

We use a two-good dynamic intertemporal general equilibrium model to formalize the economic intuition of Krugman about the explanation of the J-curve phenomenon in terms of habit persistence in consumption and sluggishness in capital adjustment. The results differ markedly according to the...

The US economy is often referred to as the “banker to the world,” due to its unique role in supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign risky investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth...

The neutral rate of interest is an important concept and communication tool for central banks. We develop a small open economy model with overlapping generations to study the determinants of the neutral real rate of interest in a small open economy. The model captures domestic factors such as...

This paper studies the capital accumulation and welfare implications of reducing capital income taxation in a general equilibrium economy with uninsurable investment risks. It has been shown that, with uninsurable investment risks, under-accumulation of capital may result compared to the...

The paper gives conditions for efficiency and inefficiency of equilibrium allocations in an overlapping-generations model with a constant rate of population growth and with multiple assets, but without labour. Optimal portfolio choice implies that, for any period and history up to that period,...

This paper evaluates the impact of the taxation system on factor costs, investment and economic activity. This is performed on the basis of detailed analysis of the Italian tax system and the production of own estimates of the user cost of capital to labour, which capture the contribution of tax...