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This paper augments a relatively standard dynamic general equilibrium model with financial frictions in order to quantify the macroeconomic effects of the credit deepening process observed in many Latin American (LA) countries in the last decade, most notably in Brazil. In the model, a stylized banking sector intermediates credit from patient households to impatient households and firms. The key novelty of the paper, motivated by the Brazilian experience, is to model the credit constraint faced by (impatient) households as a function of future labor income. In the calibrated model, credit deepening generates only modest abovetrend growth in consumption, investment, and GDP. Since Brazil has experienced one of the most intense credit deepening processes in Latin America, it is argued that the quantitative effects for other LA economies are unlikely to be sizeable.

We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of housing, incorporating some key features that bridge time and space. We model explicitly the evolution of housing structures/household durables and the separate role played by land, fully accounting for households’ locational choice decisions. Housing services derive positive utility, but are decayed away from the city center. Our model enables a full characterization of the dynamic paths of housing as well as housing and land prices. The model is particularly designed to be calibrated to fit some important stylized facts, including faster growth of housing structure/household durables than housing, faster growth of land prices than housing prices, a locationally steeper land rent gradient than the housing price gradient, and relatively flatter housing quantity and price gradients in larger cities with flatter population gradients. The calibrated model is then used to quantitatively assess the dynamic and spatial consequences of demand and supply shifts. We find that nonhomotheticity in forms of income-elastic spending on housing/household durables and minimum structure requirement in housing production are essential ingredients.

A central role for economic policy involves reducing the incidence of systemic down-turns, when key economic variables experience joint extreme events. In this paper, we empirically analyze such dependence using two approaches, correlations and copulas. We document four findings. First, linear correlations and copulas disagree substantially about the nation’s dependence structure, indicating correlation complexity in the US economy. Second, GDP exhibits linear dependence with interest rates and prices, but no extreme dependence with the latter. This is consistent with the existence of liquidity traps. Third, GDP exhibits asymmetric extreme dependence with employment, consumption and investment, with relatively greater dependence during downturns. Fourth, money is neutral, especially during extreme economic conditions.

We study the impact of the employment-based health insurance system on aggregate labor supply in a general equilibrium life cycle model with incomplete markets and idiosyncratic risks in both income and medical expenses. We find that employment-based health insurance provides Americans with an extra incentive to work and is an important reason why they work much more hours than Europeans. In contrast to Europeans, who get universal health insurance from the government, most working-age Americans get health insurance through their employers. Since medical expenses are large and volatile, and there is no good alternative available in the private market, health insurance from employers can be highly valuable to risk-averse individuals (much more than its actuarially fair cost), thus providing them with extra incentive to work. We calibrate the benchmark model to match the US system using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey dataset. The results of our quantitative experiments suggest that different health insurance systems account for more than half of the difference in aggregate hours that Americans and Europeans work. Furthermore, our model can also match several other relevant empirical observations, that is, the different employment rates and the different shares of full-time/part-time workers in the U.S. and Europe. When our model is extended to include the different tax rates in the U.S. and Europe, a main existing explanation for the difference in aggregate labor supply, the extended model can account for a major portion of the difference in aggregate hours that Americans and Europeans work.

The absence of evidence in the scholarly literature for a tested long-term relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth is at odds with the importance attributed to entrepreneurship in the policy arena. The present paper addresses this absence, introducing entrepreneurship using four different and accepted models explaining the total factor productivity of twenty OECD countries with data for the period 1969–2010. Traditionally, entrepreneurship is not addressed in these models. We show that in all models—as well as a joint one—entrepreneurship has a significant influence while the remaining effects largely stay the same. Entrepreneurship is measured as the business ownership rate (number of business owners per workforce) corrected for the level of economic development (GDP per capita).

The paper uses the a multi-region (reforming euro-area region, rest of euro area, rest of world) version of the QUEST macroeconomic model to analyse the impact of structural reforms on economic activity in a macroeconomic environment in which the zero bound on monetary policy rates is temporarily binding. Following Eggertsson et al. (2014), the simulations focus on reforms with deflationary impact, namely reforms that increase competition and reduce mark-ups and labour costs in the economy. The results suggest that the short-term output response to reforms is less positive at the zero bound compared to 'normal times' and can indeed be negative. Negative net effects are small and rather short-lived, however. Simulations that compare current and pre-announced future reforms question the idea that commitment to future reforms would improve economic conditions compared to reform implementation at the zero bound. According to political economy models, the zero bound may reduce reform intensity by increasing the short-term cost of implementation.

In this paper we use Norwegian tax data and a novel natural experiment to isolate the impact of job loss risk on saving behavior. We find that a one percentage point increase in job loss risk increases liquid savings by roughly 1.2 - 2.0 percent. Further, we show that employment falls in non-tradable industries not directly affected by the shock, also after controlling for intersectoral linkages and lower demand from affected industries, consistent with the household demand channel of recessions.

We study the development of bank lending in the U.S. after four large jumps in uncertainty using an event study approach. We find that more liquid banks reduce lending less than banks with smaller liquidity ratios after a surge in uncertainty. Lending by smaller banks is also less responsive to increases in uncertainty. Banks with a higher capitalization ratio keep up lending to a greater extent, but the effect is only significant for banks which are not part of a multi-bank holding company. This heterogeneity across banks suggests that declines in bank lending following increases in uncertainty are partly the result of a reduced supply of bank loans.

Resumo Nas últimas décadas, diversos estudos têm enfatizado as inter-relações entre o desenvolvimento do sistema financeiro e o crescimento econômico. Análises teóricas e empíricas sugerem que o desenvolvimento do sistema financeiro exerce um efeito positivo sobre a taxa de crescimento econômico, gerando impactos no crescimento da renda e na redução das taxas de pobreza. Este estudo procurou investigar a efetividade do desenvolvimento do sistema financeiro como um instrumento de promoção do crescimento econômico, da ampliação da renda e da redução da pobreza, utilizando dados das unidades federativas brasileiras, no período 1995-2008 e empregando a técnica econométrica de análise da correlação canônica, visando confrontar as predições teóricas com o comportamento empírico das variáveis de interesse ao longo do tempo. Os resultados obtidos denotaram que o desenvolvimento do sistema financeiro demonstrou ter um bom poder preditivo da variância dos compostos de variáveis correlatos à renda e a pobreza. Abstract In recent decades, several studies have highlighted the relationship between the development of the financial system and economic growth. Theoretical and empirical analyses suggest that financial system spurs economic growth, generating impacts on income growth and reducing poverty rates. This study investigated the effectiveness of the development of the financial system as a tool to promote economic growth, increase income and reduce poverty, using data on the Brazilian states from 1995 to 2008. We employ canonical correlation in order to compare the theoretical predictions with the empirical behavior of the variables of interest over time. The results show that the development of the financial system has demonstrated a sound predictive power of the variance of the compounds of the variables related to income and poverty.

Workers in the US and other developed countries retire no later than a century ago and spend a significantly longer part of their life in school, implying that they stay less years in the work force. The facts of longer schooling and simultaneously shorter working life are seemingly hard to square with the rationality of the standard economic life cycle model. In this paper we propose a novel theory, based on health and aging, that explains these long-run trends. Workers optimally respond to a longer stay in a healthy state of high productivity by obtaining more education and supplying less labor. Better health increases productivity and amplifies the return on education. The health accelerator allows workers to finance educational efforts with less forgone labor supply than in the previous state of shorter healthy life expectancy. When both life-span and healthy life expectancy increase, the health effect is dominating and the working life gets shorter if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution for leisure is sufficiently small or the return on education is sufficiently large. We calibrate the model and show that it is able to predict the historical trends of schooling and retirement.

We develop a model that reproduces the return and volatility spread between sin and non-sin stocks, where investors trade off dividends with the ethical assessment of companies. We relax the assumption of boycott behaviour and investigate the role played by the dividend share of sin stocks on their return and volatility spread relative to non-sin stocks. We empirically show that the dividend share predicts a positive return and volatility spread. This pattern is reproduced by our model when dividends and ethicalness are complementary goods and investors are sufficiently risk averse.

Within three self-contained chapters, this dissertation provides new insights into the macroeconomic consequences of income inequality from a global perspective. Following an introduction, which summarizes the main findings and offers a brief overview of trends in income distribution, Chapter 2 evaluates the relationship between the labor share of income and the evolution of aggregate demand. Chapter 3 analyzes the link between income inequality and aggregate saving; and Chapter 4 directly estimates the effect of inequality and public redistribution on economic growth., Seit den 1980er Jahren ist es in den meisten hochentwickelten Volkswirtschaften, aber auch in vielen Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern, zu einem ausgeprägten Anstieg der Einkommensungleichheit gekommen. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die makroökonomischen Auswirkungen dieser Entwicklung anhand von Methoden der Panel-Daten Ökonometrie. Die Arbeit baut dabei auf drei eigenständigen Studien auf, die verschiedene Effekte einer sich verändernden Einkommensverteilung beleuchten. Im Mittelpunkt steht insbesondere die Frage, ob eine zunehmende Ungleichheit nachhaltiges Wachstum verhindert.

We use a Dixit-Stiglitz setting to show that aggregate productivity fluctuations can be generated through changes in the dispersion of firms’ productivity. When the elasticity of substitution among goods is larger than one, an increase in the dispersion raises aggregate productivity because firms at the top of the distribution produce most of output. When the elasticity is smaller than one, an increase in the dispersion reduces aggregate productivity because firms at the bottom of the distribution use most of inputs. We use individual firm level data from Spanish manufacturing firms to test the relationship between the dispersion of firms’ productivity and aggregate productivity. The estimated coefficients are consistent with the predictions of the model: we find that an increase in the coefficient of variation of firms productivity of 1% increases aggregate productivity by 0.16% in sectors with an elasticity of substitution larger than one while the same increase in the standard deviation reduces aggregate productivity by 0.36% in sectors with an elasticity of substitution smaller than one.

The Great Recession has caused unemployment in the Netherlands to rise from 3.1% in 2008 to over 7% at the beginning of 2014. Structural imbalances caused by labour mismatch could be one of the explanations underlying this high rate. The goal of this paper is to examine this hypothesis. We adopt an eclectic approach to study if mismatch has increased during the Great Recession. First, we examine the development of the Beveridge curve. We estimate so-called “steady-state†Beveridge curves based on underlying labour market flows. Outward shifts of these curves are associated with decreasing matching efficiency. Second, we construct a mismatch index which enables us to calculate the contribution of sector mismatch to the unemployment level. Our analyses show little support for the hypothesis that mismatch currently is a problem on the Dutch labour market. At the aggregate level, the Beveridge curve has not shifted outwards. Furthermore, at most one-seventh of Dutch unemployment can be attributed to sector mismatch, which is comparable to or below periods prior to the Great Recession.

In 2010, in response to an ever-worsening fiscal crisis, the ECB began purchasing sovereign debt from troubled euro-area countries through its Securities Market Programme (SMP). This program was designed to improve market functioning and restore the monetary transmission mechanism within the euro area. This paper does not test those ideals. Rather, we test whether SMP purchases systematically lowered peripheral yields and spreads. We find limited evidence of purchase effects but large announcement effects. In addition, on days in which the ECB was believed to have made large purchases, yields moved down, independent of the size of the ECB’s purchases or even if the ECB conducted any purchase at all that week. In all, we conclude that the ECB’s SMP influenced yields through a confidence channel rather than through any direct purchase effect. In the appendix to this paper we provide a detailed timeline of SMP purchases and market beliefs about purchase timing.

Large swings in aggregate household-sector spending, especially for big ticket items such as cars and housing, have been a dominant feature of the macroeconomic landscape in the past two decades. Income and wealth inequality increased over the same period, leading some to suggest the two phenomena are interconnected. Indeed, there is supporting evidence for the idea that heterogeneity in economic shocks and spending are connected, most notably in studies using local-area geography as the unit of analysis. The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) provides a household-level perspective on changes in wealth, income, and spending across different types of families. The SCF confirms that inequality is indeed increasing in recent decades, and the data provide support for the proposition that shocks to income and wealth are indeed related to large swings in spending across and within birth cohorts. However, the economic shocks associated with the Great Recession and changes in spending and debt to income ratios are widespread, and inconsistent with a narrow focus on the experiences and changes in behavior of particular (especially low- and modest-income) households.

This study attempts to investigate the role of trade openness, investment and population in the Syrian economy over the period 1980-2010. The cointegration test indicates that GDP is positively and significantly related to the trade openness, investment and population. The Granger causality test indicates bidirectional short-run causality relationships between trade openness, investment, population and GDP. There are also bidirectional long-run causality relationships between investment, population and GDP, and unidirectional long-run causality relationship running from trade openness to GDP. The study result indicates that population has the biggest effect on the GDP, thus we suggest improving the quality of the human capital in the country, as well as improving the investment and opening up the Syrian economy to foreign trade.

Standard economic models assume that the demand for expert predictions arises only under the conditions in which individuals are uncertain about the underlying process generating the data and there is a strong belief that past performances predict future performances. We set up the strongest possible test of these assumptions. In contrast to the theoretical suggestions made in the literature, people are willing to pay for predictions of truly random outcomes after witnessing only a short streak of accurate predictions live in the lab. We discuss potential explanations and implications of such irrational learning in the contexts of economics and finance. © 2015 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

To what extent is public debt private liquidity? Much policy advice given in the aftermath of the financial crisis rests on the assumption that increasing public debt relaxes borrowing constraints of private households. This is the case for ad-hoc debt limits, which are exogenous to public policy. Instead, if debt limits are fully endogenous, as e.g. in the case of the natural borrowing limit, public debt has no impact. We assume that borrowing limits arise because of limited contract enforceability and are therefore determined as equilibrium outcomes. Using an incomplete markets economy in which households are subject to uninsurable earnings shocks, we show that public debt provides some liquidity, but less so than it would if constraints were imposed ad-hoc. We show that generating borrowing constraints as an equilibrium outcome substantially alters the answers to other important questions, such as for the welfare effects of government debt or its impact on real economic activity.

In Romania the electricity market is totally opening in 2007 and by 1 July 2014 all transactions must be made only on the competitive market. This paper wants to do the analysis period following the liberalization of a recent period to highlight the changes that have occurred in the market. I used a general equilibrium model of the market which apply to the electricity market in Romania to calculate various indicators such as the amount of electricity and the prices of energy resources and analyze them in terms of market balance. The results highlight the state of imbalance and measures are required to restore the balance in the market. In conclusion, the electricity market requires large investments in equipment and refurbishments to reduce the cost of electricity.

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of house price dynamics for a sample of 16 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe over the period of 1995-2011. Design/methodology/approach – Linking housing valuations to a set of conventional fundamental determinants – relative to both the supply and the demand side of the market, institutional factors and other asset prices – and modelling short-term price dynamics – which reflect gradual adjustment to underlying fundamentals –conclusions about the existence and the basic nature of house price overvaluation (undervaluation) are drawn. Findings – Overall, it was found that actual house prices in the sample of emerging economies are not overly disconnected from fundamentals. Rather, they tend to reflect a somewhat slow adjustment to shocks to the latter. Moreover, the evidence that housing valuations may be driven by overly optimistic (or pessimistic) expectations is, in general, weak. Research limitations/implications – Residential property prices used in the empirical analysis have many limitations: while some series are derived using a hedonic pricing method, others are based on floor area prices collected by national authorities; while some countries publish house prices in national currency per-square metre (or per apartment or per dwelling), others calculate an index number scaled to some base year; while some countries publish statistics for the whole national territory, others produce data only for the capital city or for the largest cities in the country; data from national sources refer to different types of residential property; finally, available time series are relatively short, which may adversely affect the robustness of estimation results. Practical implications – The decomposition suggested in the paper has important implications: it would be paramount, in fact, for policymakers to implement market-specific diagnoses, and to find the right policy instruments that can ideally distinguish between the two underlying components driving house price short-run dynamics. Originality/value – There is a very small body of empirical literature on housing market developments in emerging economies, especially if focussed on the comparisons between the actual dynamics of housing valuations and the equilibrium ones.

This paper aims to present the factors that determine the economic growth nowadays, in the globalization era. From geography and climate to innovation and training, these factors diversified depending on the evolution of the economy and economic thought. Because of enhanced mobility as a result of globalization, some of them have lost their importance, others have become fundamental. During the last two decades, hundreds of empirical studies have tried to identify the determinant factors of economic growth. Many researchers have tried to explain economic growth based on changes in these factors, but the results leave room for future analysis.

This study attempts to investigate the effect of oil price, external debt and population on the government investment in Syria over the period 1970-2010. The Johansen cointegration test showed that oil price, external debt and population have a positive and significant long run relationship with government investment. The Granger causality test indicates bidirectional long-run causality relationships between oil price, external debt, population, and government investment. There are also unidirectional short-run causality relationships running from oil price and population to government investment, and bidirectional short-run causality relationship between external debt and government investment. The study result indicates that, external debt have the biggest effect on the government investment, as well as oil price and population can play an important role in supporting the government investment in the country.

In November 2014, investments in capital assets amounted to 95.2%, while in January–November 2014, to 97.2% on the respective index of the previous year. A long-term reduction of the volumes of building jobs may result in a dramatic drop in business activities in the business and investment complex early in 2015. The situation is made worse due to a sudden surge of the rate of inflation and growth in the cost of credit resources which situation limits the activities of private investors on the market.

По предварительной оценке Минэкономразвития России, ВВП в I кв. 2015 г. составил 97,8% от показателя I кв. 2014 г. На внутренний рынок в текущем году негативное влияние оказало одновременное сокращение потребительского спроса и инвестиций в основной капитал. Индекс оборота розничной торговли в I кв. 2015 г. составил 93,3% и инвестиции в основной капитал 94,0% по сравнению с аналогичным периодом предыдущего года. Ситуация в экономике осложняется падением реальной заработной платы на 8,3% и ростом безработицы на 1,4% по сравнению с I кв. 2014 г.

What are the reasons for which firms exit markets? In today's world the processes by which firms enter and exit markets are becoming more and more complex due to the fine networking system globalization and communication create at every level. To find and point out the reasons for which firms or their branches disappear off the market, we stylized and simplified market concepts and developed them in an agent-based model. Using NetLogo, we created an artificial market model where firms and their branches enter or exit the market, produce and sell goods and hire the people inhabiting this world.

В текущем году сокращение внутреннего спроса оказывало негативное влияние на внутренний рынок. Индекс оборота розничной торговли в июле 2015 г. в годовом выражении составил 90,8%, платных услуг населению – 97,5% и инвестиции в основной капитал – 91,5%. В июле 2015 г. выпуск обрабаты- вающего производства снизился до 92,9% по сравнению с июлем прошлого года. Негативное влияние на динамику обрабатывающего производства оказывает сокращение выпуска капитальных товаров.

The volume of investments in fi xed assets over the period of January–July 2015 in real terms amounted to 94.1%; the index for July dropped to 91.5% on the same month of last year. The structure of sources of investment fi nancing displayed a strengthening trend towards increasing the share of equity and federal budget funding. Over the fi rst half-year of 2015, the decline of investment in fi xed assets demonstrated by the segment represented by big and medium-sized enterprises amounted to 7.3% on the corresponding period of last year.

По данным Росстата, ВВП в I квартале 2015 г. составил 98,1% от показателя I квартала 2014 г. Нега- тивное влияние на экономическую динамику в текущем году оказывает сокращение внутреннего спро- са и усиление спада потребительского рынка. Индекс оборота розничной торговли в апреле 2015 г. составил 90,2% и инвестиции в основной капитал 95,2% по сравнению с аналогичным периодом пре- дыдущего года. Ситуация в экономике осложняется падением реальной заработной платы на 13,2% и ростом безработицы на 8,4% по сравнению с апрелем 2014 г.

This study investigated the role of oil and non-oil exports in the Syrian economic over the period 1975-2010. The ADF unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, Granger causality test, impulse response functions (IRF), and variance decomposition (VD) analysis were used in this study. The cointegration test indicates that GDP is positively and significantly related to oil and non-oil exports. The Granger causality test indicates bidirectional shortrun causality relationships between GDP, oil exports and non-oil exports. There are also bidirectional long-run causality relationship between non-oil exports and GDP, and unidirectional long-run causality relationship running from oil exports to GDP. The study result indicates that oil exports have the biggest effect on the GDP, thus we suggest encouraging non-oil export and increase its diversity.

12 марта 2014 г. со стороны ОЭСР был приостановлен процесс присоединения России к этой орга- низации. Долгая история сотрудничества России с ОЭСР, – сначала в формате в научно-экспертнойподдержки внедрения общепризнанных стандартов ОЭСР с целью развития отдельных институтов национальной экономики, преимущественно в сфере налогообложения, антимонопольной и корпора- тивной политики, затем, с мая 2007 г., формально определенный процесс присоединения, когда на за- седании Совета ОЭСР было принято решение о приглашении России в качестве полноправного члена ОЭСР, – демонстрирует значимость взаимодействия России с данной организацией.

The article finds that productivity in Belgium has tended to slow down over the past three decades. After controlling for that fundamental tendency, the relationship between persons in employment and economic activity appears generally stable over time throughout the business cycle and is generally unaffected by recessions. In Belgium in particular, in terms of deviation from their respective trends, a 1 % rise in GDP brings a 0.5 % increase in employment. That figure is in line with the European average. The downward trend in productivity is accompanied by a shift to the tertiary sector of the economy. That is also one of the factors behind the decline in average working time. Although the relationship between employment and GDP is very stable throughout the business cycle, the recent financial crisis differs from previous recessions in a general tendency to protect jobs at first, in all twelve economies studied in the article. However, that soon came to an end and the situation returned to normal ; if employment is struggling to pick up, that is essentially because of the weakness of the economic recovery. Finally, it is very clear that firms initially respond to fluctuations in the economy by adjusting the hours worked. In Belgium, the elasticity of those hours to economic activity is about 50 % greater than the elasticity of the number of persons employed in all sectors sensitive to the business cycle.

In H1 2015, business activities in the Russian economy were determined by weakening of the external and internal demand. In H1 2015, a decrease of 5.4% and 8.0% in investments in capital assets and the volume of the retail trade, respectively, as compared to the respective period of the previous year produced a negative eff ect on the domestic market. In Q2, the situation became more complicated due to a greater slump in the industry to 4.9%, including the manufacturing industry to 5.1% as compared to the indices of the previous year. A drop in real wages and salaries with a consolidating trend of growth in general and registered unemployment is an alarming factor.

Инвестиции в основной капитал в мае 2015 г. составили 92,4%, а за январь–май текущего года – 95,2% от соответствующих показателей 2014 г. Продолжающееся уже шестой квартал подряд сокраще- ние инвестиций определяется снижением деловой активности со второй половины 2012 г. и усугу- бляется ухудшением макроэкономической ситуации в начале 2015 г. (в результате чего продолжала сокращаться доля привлеченных средств в структуре источников финансирования инвестиций), ос- ложнением бюджетной ситуации в регионах и сокращением внутреннего платежеспособного спроса (что ведет к снижению инвестиций в строительстве, торговле и сфере платных услуг). Особую тре- вогу вызывает нестабильность инвестиционного спроса в сырьевом секторе обрабатывающей про- мышленности, оказывавшем позитивное влияние на динамику отечественного производства в 1 кв. 2015 г. В то же время инвестиционная ситуация в машиностроительном секторе демонстрирует определенный потенциал импортозамещения

Early in 2015, a further drop in investment activities was registered. In January–February 2015, investments in capital assets and the volumes of jobs in the building industry amounted to 93.6% and 96.7%, respectively, as compared to the relevant indices of the previous year.

In May 2015, investments in capital assets amounted to 92.4%, while in January–May 2015, to 95.2% as compared to respective indices of 2014. A drop in investments which continues for six quarters running has been determined by a decline of business activities since H2 2012 and made worse by the macroeconomic situation early in 2015 (due to that the share of borrowed funds in the pattern of sources of funding of investments kept decreasing), complicated budget situation in regions and reduction of domestic solvent demand (which situation results in a drop in investments in building, trade and the sphere of paid services). Instability of investment demand in the primary sector of the manufacturing industry which had a positive eff ect on the dynamics of the domestic production in Q1 2015 is of a particular concern. At the same time, the investment situation in the engineering sector demonstrates a certain potential of import substitution.

The paper proposes to analyze the evolution of foreign trade during the crisis in Romania. The evolution of foreign trade is analyzed using a simulation model. The period of analysis is 2006-2014. The data source is Eurostat and National Bank of Romania. Also, based on these data, we propose an econometric model which can be developed using different scenarios and forecasting of evolution of foreign trade. In period of economic recession, protectionist sentiments against imports competing with domestic products tend to rise. The same phenomenon was manifested in Romania. Thus, our study started from this consideration. Using econometric model we made scenarios predictions and the results are similar to the real values.

We propose a 2-country asset-pricing model where agents' preferences change endogenously as a function of the popularity of internationally traded goods. We determine the effect of the time-variation of preferences on equity markets, consumption and portfolio choices. When agents are more sensitive to the popularity of domestic consumption goods, the local stock market reacts more strongly to the preferences of local agents than to the preferences of foreign agents. Therefore, home bias arises because home-country stock represents a better investment opportunity for hedging against future fluctuations in preferences. We test our model and find that preference evolution is a plausible driver of key macroeconomic variables and stock returns.

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effects of this uncertainty, a stochastic dynamic growth model with the public sector is examined. It is shown that deterministic excessive red tape and corruption deteriorate the growth potential through income redistribution and public sector inefficiencies. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that the increase in corruption via higher uncertainty exerts adverse effects on capital accumulation, thus leading to lower growth rates.

A problem facing the United States and many other countries is how to finance retirement consumption as the number of their workers per retiree falls. Policy analysts are increasingly advocating a move to a savings-for-retirement system. An apparent problem with this move is the shortage of good savings opportunities given the limited ability of government to honor its debt. We find that there is no problem because there is much more productive capital than commonly assumed in macroeconomic modeling. We also find that eliminating capital income taxes will greatly increase savings opportunities and make a savings-for-retirement system feasible with only a modest amount of government debt. The tax policy changes we consider are phased in smoothly and are relatively modest. The switch from a system close to the current U.S. retirement system, which relies heavily on taxing workers’ incomes and making lump-sum transfers to retirees, to one without capital income taxes will increase the welfare of all birth-year cohorts alive today and particularly the welfare of the yet unborn cohorts.

Over the past 20 years, macroeconomists have incorporated more and more results from behavioral economics into their models. We argue that doing so has helped fixed deficiencies with standard approaches to modeling the economy--for example, the counterfactual absence of inertia in the standard New Keynesian model of economic fluctuations. We survey efforts to use behavioral economics to improve some of the underpinnings of the New Keynesian model--specifically, consumption, the formation of expectations and determination of wages and employment that underlie aggregate supply, and the possibility of multiple equilibria and asset price bubbles. We also discuss more broadly the advantages and disadvantages of using behavioral economics features in macroeconomic models.

This paper reflects on the development leading to the recent crisis and interprets this development as a series of events within a Minsky-Veblen Cycle. To illustrate this claim we introduce conspicuous consumption concerns, as described by Veblen, into a stock flow consistent Post Keynesian model and demonstrate that, under these conditions, a decrease in income equality leads to a corresponding increase in debt-financed consumption demand. Here Minskyian dynamics come into play: increased credit demand leads to a corresponding rise in credit supply, which, eventually, gives rise to a debt-financed consumption boom. As the solvency of households decreases and interest rates move up, banks reduce lending, triggering household bankruptcies and, finally, a recession. What follows is a stable period of consolidation, where past debts are repaid, financial stability is regained and conspicuous consumption motives may gradually take over again. We illustrate this approach to the current crisis and its explanatory validity by extending our stock-flow consistent model into a dynamic simulation.

This paper presents a Keynesian critique of Steve Keen's treatment of the aggregate demand–credit–endogenous money nexus. It argues his analytic intuition is correct but is developed in the wrong direction. Keen's fundamental relation describing determination of AD in an endogenous credit money economy suffers from two flaws. First, it neglects the core Keynesian problematic of leakages from and injections into the circular flow of income. Second, it falls into the theoretical morass regarding the black box of velocity of money via its adoption of a form of Fisher equation to determine AD. The paper contrasts Keen's treatment with a Keynesian structural framework.

In a quantitative model of Social Security with endogenous health, I argue that Social Security increases the aggregate health spending of the economy because it redistributes resources to the elderly whose marginal propensity to spend on health is high. I show by using computational experiments that the expansion of US Social Security can account for over a third of the dramatic rise in US health spending from 1950 to 2000. In addition, Social Security has a spill-over effect on Medicare. As Social Security increases health spending, it also increases the payments from Medicare, thus raising its financial burden.

Do fluctuations of the labor wedge, defined as the gap between the firm's marginal product of labor (MPN) and the household's marginal rate of substitution (MRS), reflect fluctuations of the gap between the MPN and the real wage or fluctuations of the gap between the real wage and the MRS? For many countries and most forcefully for the United States, fluctuations of the labor wedge predominantly reflect fluctuations of the gap between the real wage and the MRS. As a result, business cycle theories of the labor wedge should primarily focus on improving the household side of the labor market. Explanations of the labor wedge based on departures of the representative firm's MPN from the real wage are rejected by the data because the labor share of income is not strongly procyclical.

In this article, we show how the concept of balance of payments-constrained growth rate developed by Thirlwall (1979) can be generalized as the growth rate constrained by the balance between any two economic variables. In particular, we derive two new concepts: the government balance-constrained growth rate and the private balance-constrained growth rate. Some extensions of the basic model are also provided.

This paper investigates the impact of foreign aid, external debt and governance on the economic growth by extending the Ramsey–Cass–Koopman's growth model in an open economy framework. Steady-state and short run analysis shows that external debt and foreign aid do not affect the growth rate of consumption but have level impact on consumption. Foreign aid and governance encourage the economic growth but external debt creates a burden on the economy. Both investment and saving are independent of external debt and thus the current account surplus. Foreign aid does not affect investment directly but it has a direct positive impact on the savings in the economy. Therefore, it is argued that improvements in the quality of governance will stimulate the output and consumption rapidly and it acts like a catalyst.

The present paper is centred on the analysis of a basic, classical, closed economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, revealing some core economic variables, captured at the level of our country, both from the perspective of their reaction to the shock on technology and from the one relating to their evolution on medium to long term. After a brief rendering of the problems maximised and solved, given the constraints, by the two economic agents considered, households and firms, as well as subsequent to the presentation of the equilibrium established on the market of goods and services, the final equations are selected and implemented in Dynare, a specific tool of Matlab. The numeric results obtained and the related graphical representations are thereafter construed, the end purpose being the formulation of several suggestions regarding the appropriate economic decisions to be made in the future, by the entitled entities, in order to lay the grounds of a desirable economic growth.

In times of crisis, renewable energy sources have become more attractive for investors. It is considered that investment in renewable energy will provide medium and long term practical solutions for multiple economic crises, will improve the life quality, will eradicate poverty population, sustain the environment development and rebalance the economic situation for the states. Energy crises at states levels and their extension in time lead to a shift regarding the investors concern in fields that are updated to the current market needs. This paper will explore renewable energy sources reported to the global and local results. This study will identify potential investments in this sector in Romania taking into account the positive results and their effects on current and future energy market. In this way it shall be explained if Romania is an attractive area for investments in renewable energy and if the results of these investments are a solution or a risk for the Romanian economy.

Globalization involves the gradual integration of economies and societies. Due to globalization were set up job quality and adequately paid in regions of the world where survival of the population was carried out mostly on agriculture. Globalization has created benefits unevenly distributed between countries and even within them. Unfortunately economic integration worldwide had unbalanced and unfavorable results of certain regions, sectors or workers. Only insofar as it provides a more equitable social development for all, globalization is truly sustainable. European society is changing is influenced by various factors, among which technological progress, globalization of trade and population aging. As regards employment and equal opportunities employment policies shall contribute to improving the living conditions of citizens, the objective being sustainable growth and greater social cohesion. In this respect the European Union introduced a legal framework aimed at protecting citizens. Policy of the European Union and Romania embraced priority aims high employment of labor, increased mobility, improved working conditions and better quality jobs, increased information and advice workers, finding solutions combating poverty and social exclusion, equality between men and women and ensuring modern social protection systems.