This paper addresses two fundamental macroeconomics questions. First, are macro shocks large enough to alter the course of the economy? Second, are they large enough to materially impact economic welfare? Lucas and many others have addressed these issues, but do so primarily in the context of...

Renewable resources are affected by both environmental variability, which makes the year-to-year stock growth uncertain, and the risk of irreversible events (e.g., a stock collapse). Little is known about how a renewable resource harvester would optimally respond to the combined effects of both...

This textbook offers a compact, yet formal, synthesis of the broad field of consumption theory. Written in a coherent and accessible way, this book introduces graduate and postgraduate students to dynamic optimization applied to consumption under certainty and uncertainty, in discrete and...

We investigate the ability of workhorse structural change models in accounting for the business cycle properties of an economy. We consider three different preferences specifications: Herrendorf, Rogerson and Valentinyi (2014, HRV), Boppart (2014), and Comin, Lashkari and Mestieri (2021, CLM),...

Is there a trade-off between fluctuations and growth? The empirical evidence is mixed, with some studies (Kormendi and Meguire (1985)) finding a positive relationship, while others (Ramey and Ramey (1995)) finding the a negative one. Our objective in this paper is to understand how fundamental...

We develop analytic asymptotic methods to characterize time series properties of nonlinear dynamic stochastic models. We focus on a stochastic growth model which is representative of the models underlying much of modern macroeconomics. Taking limits as the stochastic shocks become small, we...

Recent work has revived the Schumpeterian hypothesis that recessions facilitate innovation and growth. But a major source of productivity growth, research and development, is actually procyclical. This paper argues that while it is optimal to concentrate growth-enhancing activities in downturns,...

Current explanations of why a growing economy necessarily goes through booms and recessions predict a countercyclical R&D investment. As this is very controversial from an empirical perspective, a stochastic Poisson model of endogenous business cycles and growth is presented where the...

We use stochastic optimal control-dynamic programming (DP) to derive the optimal foreign debt/net worth, consumption/net worth, current account/net worth, and endogenous growth rate in an open economy. Unlike the literature that uses an Intertemporal Budget Constraint (IBC) or the Maximum...

Aging societies will have to rely increasingly on private savings to finance retirement. The natural savings vehicles, stocks and bonds, are unfortunately lacking key risk-sharing features that are built into public retirement. Innovative government debt management can address this problem. The...

We describe a sparse grid collocation algorithm to compute recursive solutions of dynamic economies with a sizable number of state variables. We show how powerful this method may be in applications by computing the nonlinear recursive solution of an international real business cycle model with a...

This paper proposes a measure of the welfare cost of volatility derived from an endogenous growth model (AK) under uncertainty extended to the case of a recursive utility function which disentangles risk aversion from intertemporal elasticity of substitution. It encompasses a direct welfare cost...

This paper proposes a moment-matching method for approximating vector autoregressions by finite-state Markov chains. The Markov chain is constructed by targeting the conditional moments of the underlying continuous process. The proposed method is more robust to the number of discrete values and...

Introduction -- The Neoclassical GrowthModel Under a Constant Savings Rate -- Optimal Growth: Continuous Time Analysis -- Optimal Growth: Discrete Time Analysis -- Numerical Solution Methods -- Endogenous Growth Models -- Additional Endogenous Growth Models -- Growth in Monetary Economies:...

This paper shows that there is more scope for a borrower to engage in a sustainable infinite debt rollover (a "Ponzi scheme") when interest/growth rates are stochastic. In this context, I prove that the relevant "r vs. g" comparison uses the yield r_{long} to an infinite-maturity zero-coupon...

The Hicksian definition of complementarity and substitutability may not apply in contexts in which agents are not utility maximisers or where price or income variations, whether implicit or explicit, are not available. We look for tools to identify complementarity and substitutability satisfying...

In this paper, we employ both calibration and modern (Bayesian) estimation methods to assess the role of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks in generating fluctuations in hours. Using a neoclassical stochastic growth model, we show how answers are shaped by the identification...

We examine the role of government spending in the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates. Is the quantity of risk related government spending important for the price of risk? How does it depend on monetary policy conduct? Can fiscal policy immunize its impact on the term structure of...

This paper characterizes the dynamic empirical properties of country export capabilities in order to inform modelling of the long-run behavior of comparative advantage. The starting point for our analysis is two strong empirical regularities in international trade that have previously been...

This paper compares solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies. The authors compute and simulate the stochastic neoclassical growth model with leisure choice using Undetermined Coefficients in levels and in logs, Finite Elements, Chebyshev Polynomials, Second and Fifth Order...

This paper presents some new results on the solution of the stochastic neoclassical growth model with leisure. We use the method of Judd (2003) to explore how to change variables in the computed policy functions that characterize the behavior of the economy. We find a simple closed-form relation...

A series of recent studies in economic growth theory have considered a class of models of international borrowing where, in the absence of a perfect investment commitment, the borrowing constraint depends on the historical performances of the country. Thus, a better level of past economic...