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We identify US defense news shocks as shocks that best explain future moviments in defense spending over a five-year horizon and are orthogonal to current defense spending. Our identified shocks are strongly correlated with the Ramey (2011) news shocks, but explain a larger share of macroeconomic fluctuations and have significant demand effects. Fiscal news induces significant and persistent increases in output, consumption, investment, hours and the interest rate. Standard DSGE models fail to produce such a pattern. We propose a sticky price model with variable capital utilization, capital adjustment costs, and rule-of-thumb consumers that replicates the empirical findings and allows us to test the validity of our methodology for extracting anticipated fiscal shocks from the data.

We assess the effects of reforms in product and labor markets in a model economy featuring credit restrictions and pre-existing long-term debt. Both elements, which are core features of the current scenario faced by some euro area countries, combine to produce a slow and protracted deleveraging of the private sector and a persistent recession following a negative financial shock. In this environment, we show that product and labor market reforms may stimulate output and employment even in the short run, despite their defl ationary effects. Furthermore, by favoring a faster recovery of investment and collateral values, product market reforms bring forward the end of deleveraging and the exit from recession.

We investigate whether the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) can explain UK inflation in the 1970s. We confront the identification problem involved by setting up the FTPL as a structural model for the episode and pitting it against an alternative Orthodox model; the models have a reduced form that is common in form but, because each model is over-identified, numerically distinct. We use indirect inference to test which model could be generating the VECM approximation to the reduced form that we estimate on the data for the episode. Neither model is rejected, though the FTPL model substantially outperforms the Orthodox. But by far the best account of the period assumes that expectations were a probability-weighted combination of the two regimes. Fiscal policy has a substantial role in this weighted model in determining inflation. A similar model accounts for the 1980s but this role of fiscal policy is much diminished.

A major source of insurance coverage for non-elderly adults in the US is the employer-based health insurance market. Every participant in this market receives a tax subsidy because premiums are excluded from taxable income. However, people have different incentives to participate in the employer-based pool - since premiums are independent of individual risk, high-risk individuals receive implicit cross-subsidies from low-risk individuals. In this paper, we explore several ways to reform the tax subsidy by taking this implicit cross-subsidization into account. Using a general equilibrium heterogeneous agents model, we find that even though the complete elimination of the tax subsidy leads to the unraveling of the employer-based pool, there is still room for substantial savings by targeting the tax subsidy. More specifically, the same level of risk-sharing in the employer-based market can be achieved at onethird of the current costs if i) the tax subsidy is targeted only towards low-risk individuals who have weak incentives to participate in the pool, and ii) employer-based insurance premiums become age-adjusted. To improve the welfare outcome of this reform, the modified tax subsidy should also be targeted to low-income individuals., JEL Classification Codes: D91, E65, H24, http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/porapakkarm-ponpoje/

What drives the US current account imbalances? Is there solid evidence that the behavior of the current account is different during deficits and surpluses or that the size of the imbalance matters? Is there a threshold relationship between the US current account and its main drivers? We estimate a threshold model to answer these questions using the instrumental variable estimation proposed by Caner and Hansen (2004). Rather than concluding that the size or the sign of (previous) external imbalances matters, we find that time is the most important threshold variable. One regime exists before and another one exists after the third quarter of 1997, a period that coincides with the onset of the Asian financial crisis and the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. Statistically significant determinants in the second regime are the fiscal surplus, productivity, productivity volatility, oil prices, the real exchange rate, and the real interest rate. Productivity has become a more important driver since 1997.

The hard coal mining industry in the European Union (EU) is in decline, mostly due to a lack of price competitiveness. It is maintained, to a great extent, by state aid; a key objective of the industry’s existence is to provide energy security and guarantee employment in the mining regions. In Poland, the hard coal mining industry is currently undergoing a serious crisis that threatens the two largest mining enterprises with bankruptcy. In addition, due to the European Union’s restrictions concerning the circumstances of granting state aid, these enterprises cannot count on the financial support for the repair restructuring that they used on a large scale until 2011. Therefore, in this article, the main objective is to determine the influence of state aid on the competitiveness of the hard coal mining industry in 12 countries of the EU, including Poland in specific. In order to achieve the stated objective, the article is divided into three parts. The first part consists of a literature review and legal regulations that are related to state aid for the hard coal mining industry in the EU are presented. The second part identifies the amount of state aid for the mining industry in the examined countries. Next, the influence of the state aid on the economic-financial conditions and competitiveness of the industry in the examined countries is examined. The third assesses the financial results of 24 Polish hard coal mines. The data of Eurostat and EURACOAL were used in the research. Furthermore, the primary data from the Polish mines of power hard coal were also used. The research methodology includes the indicators from the area of effectiveness and productivity assessment, as well as production quality assessment in the mining industry. The research results make it possible to extend knowledge in the range of the influence of the state on the competitiveness of the traditional industries and their restructuring.

This paper reports the results of estimating a Markov-Switching New Keynesian (MSNK) model using Bayesian methods. The broadest and best fitting MSNK model is a four-regime model allowing independent changes in the regimes governing monetary policy and the volatility of the shocks. We use the estimates to investigate the mechanisms that lead to a decline in the persistence of inflation. We show that the population moment describing the serial correlation of inflation is a weighted average of the autocorrelation parameters of the exogenous shocks. Changes in the monetary or shock volatility regimes shift weight over these serial correlation parameters and affect the serial correlation properties of inflation. Estimation results indicate that a shift to a monetary regime that reacts more aggressively to inflation reduces the weight on the more persistent shocks, so lowers inflation persistence. Similarly, a shift to the low-volatility regime reduces the weight on the more persistent shocks and also contributes to reducing inflation persistence. Estimates of model-implied inflation persistence indicate that it began rising in the late 1960s and peaked around the Volcker disinflation. The subsequent decline in persistence is due to both a more aggressive monetary policy regime and less volatile shocks.

This paper estimates the long-term effects of the global recession of 2008–2009 on output in 23 countries. I measure these effects by comparing current estimates of potential output from the OECD and IMF to the path that potential was following in 2007, according to estimates at the time. The losses in potential output range from almost nothing in Australia and Switzerland to more than 30 percent in Greece, Hungary, and Ireland; the average loss, weighted by economy size, is 8.4 percent. Most countries have experienced strong hysteresis effects: shortfalls of actual output from pre-recession trends have reduced potential output almost one-for-one. In the hardest-hit economies, the current growth rate of potential is depressed, implying that the extent of lost potential is growing over time.

I evaluate the effect of inflation targeting on inflation and how it interacts with product market deregulation during the disinflationary process in the 1990s. Using a sample of 21 OECD countries, I show that, after controlling for product market deregulation, the effect of inflation targeting is quantitatively important and statistically significant. Moreover, product market deregulation also matters in particular in countries that adopted an inflation targeting regime. I propose a New Keynesian Phillips curve with an explicit role for market deregulation to rationalize the empirical evidence.

From 1980 to 1992, emerging and developing countries grew by 3.4 percent per year. Their annual rate of growth increased to 5.4 percent between 1993 and 2012. No such increase occurred for advanced nations, whose average growth from 1980 to 2012 was roughly constant (excluding the impact of the 2008-2009 Recession). Developing nations turned themselves around by embracing discipline-sustained commitment to a pragmatic and flexible growth strategy. Three illustrations of discipline through the lens of trade, fiscal, and debt reforms in the developing world offer relevant, practical lessons for recovery in advanced economies and continued catch-up growth in developing nations.

During the fi rst period, starting in the mid-1920s, the Federal Reserve offi cial During the fi rst period, starting in the mid-1920s, the Federal Reserve offi cial policy was to support high-quality bank lending, but not speculative lending. This policy was to support high-quality bank lending, but not speculative lending. This goal was set aside once in 1927, in an episode that many observers then blamed for goal was set aside once in 1927, in an episode that many observers then blamed for the economic collapse that followed the fi nancial crash of 1929. The Fed was then the economic collapse that followed the fi nancial crash of 1929. The Fed was then reluctant to increase the funds available to banks through the early 1930s, even as reluctant to increase the funds available to banks through the early 1930s, even as the Great Depression ravaged the economy. The Fed's concern with the volume and the Great Depression ravaged the economy. The Fed's concern with the volume and quality of lending in the setting of monetary policy did eventually wither. However, quality of lending in the setting of monetary policy did eventually wither. However, this only seems to have happened after the publication of Friedman and Schwartz this only seems to have happened after the publication of Friedman and Schwartz (1963), a revisionist history of the Great Depression that blamed its depth on the (1963), a revisionist history of the Great Depression that blamed its depth on the Fed's inappropriate focus on "productive lending." Fed's inappropriate focus on "productive lending." In the second period, after the experience of post-World War II infl ation, the In the second period, after the experience of post-World War II infl ation, the Federal Reserve in the 1950s was highly concerned with infl ation and was willing to Federal Reserve in the 1950s was highly concerned with infl ation and was willing to raise interest rates and bring on recessions to nip even modest infl ation rates in the raise interest rates and bring on recessions to nip even modest infl ation rates in the bud. This brought withering criticism for the Federal Reserve on the grounds that bud. This brought withering criticism for the Federal Reserve on the grounds that the recessions of 1957 and 1960 had been unnecessary. By the mid-1960s, some Fed the recessions of 1957 and 1960 had been unnecessary. By the mid-1960s, some Fed offi cials seem to have developed an aversion to creating recessions as a method of offi cials seem to have developed an aversion to creating recessions as a method of

Sweden was hit by a severe macroeconomic crisis in the early 1990s. GDP fell for three consecutive years in 1991–1993, unemployment increased by 9 percentage points, banks had to be nationalized, and public budget deficits exceeded 10 percent of GDP. The recovery was however quick. GDP growth was around four percent in 1994–1995, and budget deficits had been eliminated by 1998. Growth remained high in the subsequent decade, and the government debt ratio was reduced by almost 50 percent of GDP. This paper describes and analyzes the Swedish crisis and the policy measures implemented in response to the crisis. Policy measures include abandoning the fixed exchange rate, fiscal austerity, a new stricter fiscal framework, and several structural reforms in the 1990s. These policies were appropriate for handling the Swedish crisis, but the Swedish experiences have limited applicability for the current debt crisis, in particular because currency depreciation in combination with strong growth on export markets was a key ingredient in the Swedish recovery. Implementing fiscal austerity would have been more complicated absent this export-led growth. Moreover, the new fiscal framework has most likely contributed to strengthening public finances, but I demonstrate that budget surpluses and high GDP growth only explain around a third of the reduction in the public debt ratio after 1997.

We show that in the presence of idiosyncratic risk, the public revelation of information about risky aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can have a welfare-reducing effect. By announcing information on non-insurable aggregate risk, the policy maker distorts households’ incentives for insurance of idiosyncratic risk and increases the riskiness of the optimal self-enforceable allocation. The negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can be quantitatively important for a monetary authority that reveals changes in its short-run inflation target. We characterise parameters for which the effect dominates conventional effects that favour releasing better information.

We measure the response of household spending to the economic stimulus payments (ESPs) disbursed in mid-2008, using special questions added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey and variation arising from the randomized timing of when the payments were disbursed. We find that, on average, households spent about 12-30% (depending on the specification) of their stimulus payments on nondurable expenditures during the three-month period in which the payments were received. Further, there was also a substantial and significant increase in spending on durable goods, in particular vehicles, bringing the average total spending response to about 50-90% of the payments. Relative to research on the 2001 tax rebates, these spending responses are estimated with greater precision using the randomized timing variation. The estimated responses are substantial and significant for older, lower-income, and home-owning households. We find little evidence that the propensity to spend varies with the method of disbursement (paper check versus electronic transfer).

The euro area is currently going through its worst period of recession and economic stagnation since the Great Depression and World War II. The article tries to give an impression of the extraordinary degree of fiscal austerity and the devastating economic effects it has already had and must be expected to have in the near future. In addition it is argued that both the lack of economic justification and the devastating consequences of the fiscal policies currently executed should have been absolutely obvious even from a mainstream perspective. Therefore the sad state of economic policies in the euro area is that it did not even follow moderate mainstream proposals but instead seemed to rely on radical and outdated theoretical or purely ideological foundations. Germany as the most economically and politically influential member state of the euro area seems to be most infected with such radical ideas.

In this paper the euro crisis is interpreted as the latest episode in the crisis of finance-dominated capitalism. For 11 initial Euro area countries, the major features of finance-dominated capitalism are analyzed; specifically, the increasing inequality of income distribution and the rising imbalances of current accounts. Against this background, the euro crisis and the economic policy reactions of European governments and institutions are examined. It is shown that deflationary stagnation policies have prevailed since 2010, resulting in massive real GDP losses; some improvement in the price competitiveness of the crisis countries but considerable and persistent current account imbalances; reductions in government deficit–to-GDP ratios but continuously rising trends in gross government debt–to-GDP ratios; a risk of further recession for the euro area as a whole — and the increasing threat of the euro’s ultimate collapse. Therefore, an alternative macroeconomic policy approach tackling the basic contradictions of finance-dominated capitalism and the deficiencies of European economic policy institutions and strategies — in particular, the lack of (1) an institution convincingly guaranteeing public debt and (2) a stable and sustainable financing mechanism for acceptable current account imbalances — is outlined.

Martin Feldstein interviewed Paul Volcker in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 10, 2013, as part of a conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research on “The First 100 Years of the Federal Reserve: The Policy Record, Lessons Learned, and Prospects for the Future.” Volcker was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1979 through 1987. Before that, he served stints as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1975 to 1979, as Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs in the US Department of the Treasury from 1969 to 1974, as Deputy Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs in the Treasury from 1963 to 1965, and as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1952 to 1957. He has led and served on a wide array of commissions, including chairing the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board from its inception in 2009 through 2011.

In early 2013, the French economy, like many other EU economies, faces tough challenges. French GDP is 9 per cent below the level it would have reached had it continued to grow at its pre-crisis trend. France has committed to cut the public deficit to 3 per cent in 2013 and 0 per cent in 2017 which would imply dramatic public spending cuts and fiscal tightening, reducing GDP growth even further. France has to choose between strengthening its specificity, its social model and its State-interventionist tradition, and imitating the best pupils of globalization in the world or in Europe by implementing liberal or social-liberal strategies. The paper deals with the French government strategy since the 2012 presidential elections and tries to assess its chances of success. In many areas – fiscal strategy, social issues, banking and industrial policies – there is a significant risk that the announced proactive strategy will be replaced by policies accepting the constraints imposed by European institutions and financial markets.

In a seminal paper, Richard Clarida, Jordi Gall, and Mark Gertler (2000) studied the implica tions of monetary policy for macroeconomic fluctuations using a prototypical forward-looking sticky price model of the monetary transmission mechanism. They proposed simple forward looking equations for the reaction function of monetary policy to deviations of inflation and output from their implicit targets. They estimated these equations over sample periods before and after Paul Volcker became chairman of the Fed. They found that the policy rate did not react sufficiently strongly to expected deviations of inflation from target prior to Volcker, thus violat ing the Taylor principle and opening up the possibility of sunspot fluctuations induced by self fulfilling expectations. In contrast, policy over the Volcker-Greenspan era was found to satisfy the Taylor principle, and this was seen as an important factor contributing to the conquest of US inflation.1

While there has been intense debate in the empirical literature about the effects of minimum wages on inequality in the US, its general equilibrium effects have been given little attention. In order to quantify the full effects of a decreasing minimum wage on inequality, I build a dynamic general equilibrium model, based on a two-sector growth model where the supply of high-skilled workers and the direction of technical change are endogenous. I find that a permanent reduction in the minimum wage leads to an expansion of low-skilled employment, which increases the incentives to acquire skills, thus changing the composition and size of high-skilled employment. These permanent changes in the supply of labour alter the investment flow into R&D, thereby decreasing the skill-bias of technology. The reduction in the minimum wage has spill-over effects on the entire distribution, affecting uppertail inequality. Through a calibration exercise, I find that a 30 percent reduction in the real value of the minimum wage, as in the early 1980s, accounts for 15 percent of the subsequent rise in the skill premium, 18.5 percent of the increase in overall inequality, 45 percent of the increase in inequality in the bottom half, and 7 percent of the rise in inequality at the top half of the wage distribution.

The sovereign debt crisis in Greece represents a very interesting case in which the Greek government succeeded in transforming domestic fiscal deficit problem, overspending and fear of free market reforms into a European challenge consistent with justifiable concerns about the sustainability of the euro-project and its likely future. In this paper, the roots of the crisis and the way of addressing it are discussed. In particular the features, drawbacks, missed opportunities and pitfalls of the €110 billion EU/IMF rescue package granted to Greece are examined. It is argued that the government’s focus on taxation rather than on politically costly privatization and cutbacks in the public sector undermined economic activity in the country, decreased the government’s revenue, and spawned disincentives for investment, without generating growth and without improving competitiveness. In brief, rather than contributing to economic recovery, the opposite was achieved as a result of the measures implemented by the government.

Turbulence has been the hallmark of the course of Indonesian economic growth. Indonesia was dubbed a “chronic drop-out” in economic performance in 1968, but it then immediately embarked on a growth spurt. Just as accolades to Indonesia's economic pragmatism and economic orthodoxy were reaching a new height, Indonesia's economy shattered during the Asian financial crisis of 1997–99. Indonesia has once again risen phoenix-like from that disaster, and the bounce back has been resilient in the face of the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite the commendable progress, however, its growth seems to be hindered. Indonesia must now tackle the two most important constraints to its continued high growth: logistics and infrastructure. © 2012 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Using German microdata and a quasi-natural experiment, we provide evidence on how households respond to an increase in uncertainty. We find that household saving increases significantly following the increase in political uncertainty observed in the run-up to the 1998 German general election. We also find evidence of a labor supply response by workers who can use the margin offered by part-time employment. Our results are suggestive of the economic effects of “wars of attrition”: when political disagreement leads to delays in adopting a reform or the possibility that earlier reforms may be revoked, the increased uncertainty could slow the economy. © 2012 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Over the past two decades, international bond markets have become the chief disciplinarian of fiscal policy, displacing the International Monetary Fund and the European Union in this role. This trend culminated in the wake of the global financial crisis, as countries that had indulged in moral hazard and fiscal profligacy during the Great Moderation were vulnerable to a sharp rise in sovereign risk premium and in some cases to loss of market access. The article compares the response of new governments in Hungary and United Kingdom to restore policy credibility. A major lesson is that governments that adopt a rules-based fiscal framework, including fiscal watchdogs and transparency norms, are far more successful in anchoring fiscal expectations and in achieving fiscal sovereignty than those that do not.

Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Thailand has become highly dependent on exports as the main engine of economic growth. In 2008, the ratio of export to GDP was about 76.5 percent. The global economic crisis triggered by the sub-prime loans debacle in the United States has prompted Thailand to rethink its high dependence on export. This paper examines the options for external and internal economic rebalancing strategies for Thailand. External rebalancing will require Thailand to rely more on regional markets and less on the Western markets for its exports. The paper examines the possibility of promoting greater intra-regional trade and Thailand's regional trade strategies. As for internal rebalancing, the paper emphasizes the need to boost domestic public and private investment in terms of both quantity and quality to narrow the current saving–investment gap, bearing in mind the need to ensure fiscal sustainability. Finally, the paper examines broader rebalancing strategies that will help Thailand to become less dependent on exports. These include the need to (1) improve productivity; (2) increase economic efficiency; (3) deepen the production structure and create new dynamic industries; and (4) generate new growth poles. © 2012 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Never before has finance been regarded with the suspicion of these past three years. Yet money and credit are part of what enabled human beings to overcome the barbarism of immanence, the savagery of a life ruled by consumption for survival. The critical rethinking of finance involves the very notion of market economy and the globalized dimension it has reached. Who failed in this crisis, the State or the Market? The State, although by virtue of a paradox. Is globalization the culprit? No. A different financial system must emerge from the 2007-09 crisis: freed from the “idolatry of laissez-faire”, but not thrown back into obsolete technologies or permanently restrained by anachronistic “real socialism” bridles.

In recent years, the possibility of an international financial crisis has increased because of greater liquidity of international financial markets, an increase in corporate indebtedness, and the decline of the banking industry. Using an asymmetric information analysis, this paper outlines what signals a central bank might look for to determine if a financial crisis is occurring and then describes how central banks might operate and cooperate to prevent financial crises. Copyright 1994 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester

This paper uses Bi-Directional Reiterative Truncated Projected Least Squares (BD-RTPLS) to estimate annual ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G multipliers for China’s 31 provinces between 1996 and 2006 (GPP = Gross Provincial Product and G = government spending in the province). In order to account for the influence of omitted variables, BD-RTPLS produces a separate ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G estimate for every observation in the data set. I find that ∂GPP/∂G and %∂GPP/%∂G were highest in 1996 while China was drastically cutting government spending to curb inflation, were lowest in 1997 during the Asian Financial Crisis, slowly rose between 1998 and 2004, and then declined some in 2005 and 2006 when the Chinese yuan was slowly appreciating.

This paper provides a survey of the Great Depression comprising both a narrative account and a detailed review of the empirical evidence, focusing especially on the experience of the United States. We examine the reasons for and flawed resolution of the American banking crisis, as well as the conduct of fiscal and monetary policy. We also consider the pivotal role of the gold standard in the international transmission of the slump and leaving gold as a route to recovery. Policy lessons for today from the Great Depression are discussed, as are some implications for macroeconomics. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Following its opening to trade and foreign investment in the mid-1980s, Mexico's economic growth has been modest at best, particularly in comparison with that of China. Comparing these countries and reviewing the literature, we conclude that the relation between openness and growth is not a simple one. Using standard trade theory, we find that Mexico has gained from trade, and by some measures, more so than China. We sketch out a theory in which developing countries can grow faster than the United States by reforming. As a country becomes richer, this sort of catch-up becomes more difficult. Absent continuing reforms, Chinese growth is likely to slow down sharply, perhaps leaving China at a level less than Mexico's real GDP per working-age person. (JEL E23, E65, F14, O10, O20, O47)

Over the last three decades, Mexico has aggressively reformed its economy, opening to foreign trade and investment, achieving fiscal discipline, and privatizing state owned enterprises. Despite these efforts, the country's economic growth has been lackluster, trailing that of many other developing nations. In this paper, I review arguments for why Mexico hasn't sustained higher rates of economic growth. The most prominent suggest that some combination of poorly functioning credit markets, distortions in the supply of nontraded inputs, and perverse incentives for informality creates a drag on productivity growth. These are factors internal to Mexico. One possible external factor is that the country has the bad luck of exporting goods that China sells, rather than goods that China buys. I assess evidence from recent literature on these arguments and suggest directions for future research. (JEL E23, E65, F14, O10, O20, O47)

Dollarization brought economic stability to Ecuador and higher economic growth. The labor market has not reacted accordingly and unemployment rates remain stubbornly around 10%. I use a simple econometric model of the labor market to disentangle the impact on employment of GDP growth, real wages, the cost of capital, and the real exchange rate. I found two opposing effects at work. On one hand, vigorous economic growth has led to a substantial expansion of labor demand (scale effect). On the other hand, changes in relative factor prices brought about by the dollarization process have played against employment creation (substitution effects): real minimum wages have increased while at the same time the real price of imported intermediate goods and the cost of capital have declined steadily. Together, these price changes indicate that labor is becoming a more expensive factor of production and, thus, signal for substituting labor away.

The estimation of an ordered probit model for currency reforms attempting to end 31 hyperinflations and three huge inflations of the twentieth century shows that the introduction of an independent central bank and the adoption of a credibly fixed exchange rate are crucial for the success of a currency reform. In addition, currency reforms are demonstrated to be more difficult in centrally planned economies than in market economies.

Ray Fair's Estimating How the Macroeconomy Works is the latest in a series of books by Fair that build, estimate, and apply his macroeconometric model to study the U.S. economy. In this book, Fair updates the model to incorporate the most recent data and uses it to analyze several important empirical questions, such as whether the U.S. economy moved into a new age of high productivity in the last half of the 1990s and the dynamics of prices, output, and unemployment. This review places his work in the context of the historical evolution of aggregate econometric models, compares it with the current developments in the estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models, and discusses some salient aspects of Fair's contributions.

Transparency in committee decision making may have clear benefits by making members more accountable to outside observers. We consider one potential cost: the possibility that publishing records of deliberations will make members more reluctant to offer dissenting opinions. We construct a model that compares incentives for members with career concerns to voice dissent when deliberations occur in public or in private. We test the model using an original dataset based on deliberations of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee, asking whether the FOMC’s 1993 decision to begin releasing transcripts of its meetings has altered incentives for dissent. We find evidence that this is indeed the case. There has been much recent discussion of the advantages of transparency in agency relationships both in and outside of government. While research has attempted to model this issue theoretically, there has been less progress with empirical tests, a problem due no doubt in large part to the fact that it is difficult to make before and after comparisons of a shift in transparency. Often, no data are available on an agent’s actions prior to the establishment of transparency. In this article we focus on one specific type of transparency, publishing verbatim transcripts of committee meetings, and one specific reason why this type of transparency might not be desirable, the possibility that the quality of deliberation on a committee will suffer if the deliberations take place in public. We develop a theoretical model that helps to identify the potential costs of this type of transparency and we then test the model empirically using an original dataset on deliberations of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC); our dataset is unique in that it records views expressed by policymakers at FOMC meetings and not just their official votes. Our empirical tests focus in particular on the observed effect of the institutional change that occurred in 1993, when the FOMC decided to begin releasing transcripts of its meetings after a delay of five years. Transparency is a particularly relevant issue in monetary policy, because it is commonly argued that when central banks take actions such as publishing macroeconomic forecasts, revealing individual votes on monetary policy committees, or releasing minutes of meetings, this will lead to improved economic outcomes while simultaneously facilitating democratic accountability. 1

Most advanced economies have experienced a striking decline in the volatility of aggregate economic activity since the early 1980s. Volatility reductions are evident for output and employment at the aggregate level and across most industrial sectors and expenditure categories. Inflation and inflation volatility have also declined dramatically. Previous studies offer several potential explanations for this “Great Moderation.” We review evidence on the Great Moderation in conjunction with evidence about volatility trends at the micro level. We combine the two types of evidence to develop a tentative story for important components of the aggregate volatility decline and its consequences. The key ingredients are declines in firm-level volatility and aggregate volatility—most dramatically in the durable goods sector. Surprisingly, this has occurred without a decline in household consumption volatility and individual earnings uncertainty. Our explanation for the aggregate volatility decline stresses improved supply-chain management, particularly in the durable goods sector, and, less important, a shift in production and employment from goods to services. We provide evidence that better inventory control made a substantial contribution to declines in firm-level and aggregate volatility. Consistent with this view, if we look past the turbulent 1970s and early 1980s much of the moderation reflects a decline in high frequency (short-term) fluctuations. While these developments represent efficiency gains, they do not imply (nor is there evidence for) a reduction in economic uncertainty faced by individuals and households.

The bank lending channel theory posits that during monetary contractions banks restrict some firms' loans, thus reducing their desired investment independently of interest rates. Previous research finds small firms reduce, while large firms accelerate, loan growth. We find that small firms increase trade credit, a substitute credit, indicating a strong loan demand. It supports the bank lending channel: they do not voluntarily cut bank loans since they increase a less-desirable alternative. Using trade credit is propitious since unlike commercial paper (investigated by previous researchers), it is widely used by the small firms suffering the loan decline. Surprisingly, we also find large firms increase trade credit, a puzzle since they are typically assumed to have wide access to other credit. Using individual manufacturing firm data, we find the reasons large firms use trade credit are financial in nature: those without a bond rating increase trade credit (that is, without access to open market credit). As relatively few firms have this mark of quality, it implies that more firms are affected by credit constraints than previously believed.

In this paper, we investigate possible sources of declining economic growth in Italy beginning near the middle of the 1990s. A long-term data analysis suggests that the poor performance of the Italian economy cannot be blamed on an unfortunate business cycle contingency. Other countries of the euro area have shown better performance, and the macroeconomic data indicate that the Italian economy has not grown at the same rate as these other European economies. We investigate the sources of economic fluctuations in Italy by applying the business cycle accounting procedure introduced by Chari et al. (Econometrica 75(3):781–836, 2007). We analyze the relative importance of efficiency, labor, investment and government wedges for business cycles in Italy during the 1982–2008 period. We find that individual wedges have played different roles during this period; however, the efficiency wedge is shown to be the factor most responsible for the stagnation phase that began in approximately 1995. Our findings also show that the decline in labor market distortions that occurred in Italy during the 1990s alleviated the stagnation effect somewhat and prevented an even more abrupt slowdown in per capita output growth. Francesco Turino is grateful for the financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER funds (Project SEJ-2007-62656/ECON).

We identify the degree of intergenerational altruism in an OLG framework à la Barro exploiting the quasi-experimental variation generated by reforms of bequest taxation (estate or inheritance tax, in the U.S.) and taxes on inter vivos real estate donations (gift tax, in the U.S.) that were enacted in Italy between 2000 and 2001. Employing a unique data set containing information on the housing stock and house prices in 13 large Italian cities between 1993 and 2004, we identify the structural parameter of interest via the effect of changes in the tax rate on house prices. We find that the intergenerational altruism parameter is about 20%. Given the possible anticipation of the reform this estimate should be interpreted as a lower bound.

Differences across decades in the counter-cyclical stance of fiscal policy can identify whether the growth in government spending affects output growth and so speeds recovery from a recession. We study government-spending reaction functions from the 1920s and 1930s for twenty countries. There are two main findings. First, surprisingly, government spending was less counter-cyclical in the 1930s than in the 1920s. Second, the growth of government spending did not have a significant effect on output growth, so that there is little evidence that this feature of fiscal policy played a stabilizing role in the interwar period. Resume Identifier le caractere effectif ou non de la politique fiscale a partir de la contra-cyclicite differentielle des depenses gouvernementales pendant l’entre-deux guerres. Des differences dans le degre de contra-cyclicite de la politique budgetaire peuvent servir a identifier si la croissance des depenses publiques a un effet sur la croissance de l’output, et accelere ainsi la reprise de l’activite suivant une recession. Nous etudions des fonctions de reaction des depenses publiques pour les annees 1920 et 1930, ce pour vingt pays. Il en ressort deux resultats principaux. Premierement, et fait surprenant, les depenses publiques etaient moins contra-cycliques durant les annees 1930 que 1920. Deuxiemement, la croissance des depenses publiques n’a pas eu d’effet significatif sur la croissance de l’output, ce qui permet de douter que cet aspect de la politique budgetaire ait joue un role stabilisateur durant l’entre-guerre.

In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, Germany was often called “the sick man of Europe.” Indeed, Germany's economic growth averaged only about 1.2 percent per year from 1998 to 2005, including a recession in 2003, and unemployment rates rose from 9.2 percent in 1998 to 11.1 percent in 2005. Today, after the Great Recession, Germany is described as an “economic superstar.” In contrast to most of its European neighbors and the United States, Germany experienced almost no increase in unemployment during the Great Recession, despite a sharp decline in GDP in 2008 and 2009. Germany's exports reached an all-time record of $1.738 trillion in 2011, which is roughly equal to half of Germany's GDP, or 7.7 percent of world exports. Even the euro crisis seems not to have been able to stop Germany's strengthening economy and employment. How did Germany, with the fourth-largest GDP in the world transform itself from “the sick man of Europe” to an “economic superstar” in less than a decade? We present evidence that the specific governance structure of the German labor market institutions allowed them to react flexibly in a time of extraordinary economic circumstances, and that this distinctive characteristic of its labor market institutions has been the main reason for Germany's economic success over the last decade.

We develop and estimate a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to investigate the effectiveness of the Australian fiscal stimulus package introduced in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC). The estimated model implies a fiscal multiplier of 0.9 on impact and 1.26 with one-year monetary accommodation. Utilising the estimated shocks - in particular, the fiscal shocks that mimic the stimulus transfers - we conduct several counterfactual policy experiments. Our results suggest that the stimulus transfers were almost equally important as the concurrent monetary easing actions in helping the Australian economy to avoid a recession after the GFC.

We study the underground economy within a dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium framework. Our model combines limited tax enforcement with an otherwise standard two-sector neoclassical stochastic growth model. The Bayesian estimation of the model based on Italian data provides evidence in favor of an important underground sector in Italy, with a size that has increased steadily over the whole sample period. We show that this pattern is due to a steady increase in taxation. Fiscal policy experiments suggest that a moderate tax cut, along with a stronger effort in the monitoring process, causes a sizeable reduction in the size of the underground economy and provides a positive stimulus for the regular economy. Both of these effects jointly increase total fiscal revenues. Francesco Turino is grateful for the financial support provided by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER funds (project SEJ-2007-62656/ECON).

The move to a pay-as-you-earn income tax system in Iceland in 1987-1988 made income earned in 1987 tax-free. Using a sample of 9,274 individuals for the years 1986, 1987 and 1988, we calculate the labour-supply response of this change and find that total labour supply rose by 6.7% in 1987 over the average of 1986 and 1988 when we correct for entry in 1988. This consists of an 8.6% increase in weeks supplied by those already in the labour market in 1986 and a 1.9% decline due to entry/exit. The elasticity of weeks worked to the rise in after-tax wages was 0.41 for men and 0.11 for women. While the participation rate of women increased somewhat in our sample, participation by men fell.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Ce document étudie l'impact des mesures de soutien sur les marchés de biens de consommation durables, en particulier la politique française de subvention, sous les gouvernements Balladur et Juppé, à l'achat de voitures neuves. Les auteurs élaborent un modèle dynamique stochastique de choix discret pour la possession de voitures au niveau des ménages. Les règles de décision et les conditions d'équilibre qui en résultent sont utilisées pour l'estimation, à l'aide de données agrégées, des paramètres sous-jacents du modèle. Ces fonctions servent à évaluer les effets à court et long termes des politiques françaises. Les auteurs découvrent que ces politiques stimulent le secteur automobile à court terme mais favorisent, par les changements qu'elles induisent dans la distribution en coupe transversale de l'âge des voitures, une baisse ultérieure d'activité. De plus, tandis que ces politiques augmentent à court terme les revenus de l'Etat, les revenus à long terme sont, sur une base sans intervention, plus bas.

In May 1997 the Czech Republic abandoned its exchange rate peg, the centerpiece of macroeconomic strategy since 1991. This paper examines the usefulness of theories of speculative attack in interpreting the crisis. Significantly, after the crisis subsided, competitiveness returned to its earlier level. One interpretation is that the koruna was the innocent victim of turmoil in Asia. This neglects the trend deterioration of competitiveness prior to the crisis. Hence, the crisis provoked a much-needed adjustment in fiscal policy, which altered the monetary-fiscal mix and consequent equilibrium exchange rate. Sterilization during 1994–96 delayed adjustment. Earlier abandonment of the parity would have helped only if it had also induced the required fiscal adjustment. J. Comp. Econom., December 1998, 26(4), pp. 669–690. Birkbeck College & CEPR, 7 Gresse Street, London W1P 2LL, United Kingdom.

The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries (servicers) with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. A difference-in-difference strategy that exploits variation in program eligibility criteria reveals that the program generated an overall increase in the intensity of renegotiations while adversely affecting the effectiveness of renegotiations performed outside the program. Renegotiations induced by the program resulted in a modest reduction in the rate of foreclosures and reached just one-third of its targeted 3 to 4 million indebted households. This shortfall is in large part due to low renegotiation intensity of a few large servicers that responded at half the rate than others. The muted response of these servicers—which is also observed before the program—does not reflect differences in contract, borrower, or regional characteristics of mortgages across servicers. Instead, it reflects servicer-specific factors that appear to be related to their preexisting organizational capabilities. We exploit regional variation in the share of loans serviced by intermediaries with high pre-program renegotiation activity to assess the economic effects in areas more exposed to the program. Regions where HAMP was used intensively saw a lower rate of house price decline as well as an increase in the pay-down rate on consumer debt. There was no change in non-durable and durable consumption in these regions, suggesting that distressed borrowers who are in the process of debt deleveraging may have a relatively low spending multiplier from moderate debt reduction. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for debt relief programs in general and for other policy responses to crises that also require intermediaries for implementation.

We develop flexible semiparametric time series methods that are then used to assess the causal effect of monetary policy interventions on macroeconomic aggregates. Our estimator captures the average causal response to discrete policy interventions in a macro-dynamic setting, without the need for assumptions about the process generating macroeconomic outcomes. The proposed procedure, based on propensity score weighting, easily accommodates asymmetric and nonlinear responses. Application of this estimator to the effects of monetary restraint shows the Fed to be an effective inflation fighter. Our estimates of the effects of monetary accommodation, however, suggest the Federal Reserve’s ability to stimulate real economic activity is more modest. Estimates for recent financial crisis years are similar to those for the earlier, pre-crisis period.

Between 2000 and 2012, the Portuguese economy grew less than the United States during the Great Depression and less than Japan during its lost decade. This paper asks why this happened, with a particular focus on the slump between 2000 and 2007. It describes the main facts of Portugal's recent economic history, evaluates some possible explanations for its dismal performance, and proposes a new hypothesis based on the misallocation of abundant capital flows from abroad. I put forward a model of credit frictions to show that if financial integration exceeds financial deepening, productivity will fall, generating a slump as relatively unproductive firms in the non-tradables sector expand at the expense of more productive tradables firms. This explanation can also potentially account for the similarities and the differences between Portugal on the one hand, and Ireland and Spain on the other, during this period, and for some features of the crash in Portugal after 2010.

This paper argues that limited asset market participation is crucial in explaining U.S. macroeconomic performance and monetary policy before the 1980s, and their changes thereafter. We develop an otherwise standard sticky-price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which implies that at low asset-market participation rates, the interest rate elasticity of output (the slope of the IS curve) becomes positive - that is, "non-Keynesian." Remarkably, in that case, a passive monetary policy rule ensures equilibrium determinacy and maximizes welfare. Consequently, we argue that the policy of the Federal Reserve System in the pre-Volcker era, often associated with a passive monetary policy rule, was closer to optimal than conventional wisdom suggests and may thus have remained unchanged at a fundamental level thereafter. We provide institutional and empirical evidence for our hypothesis, in the latter case using Bayesian estimation techniques, and show that our model is able to explain most features of the "Great Inflation."