Explore the vast range of titles available.

Using a standard, realistically calibrated model of buffer-stock saving with transitory and permanent income shocks, we study how cross-country differences in the wealth distribution and household income dynamics affect the marginal propensity to consume out of transitory shocks (MPC). Across the 15 countries in our sample, we find that the aggregate consumption response ranges between 0.1 and 0.4 and is stronger (i) in economies with large wealth inequality, where a larger proportion of households has little wealth, (ii) under larger transitory income shocks, and (iii) when we consider households only use liquid assets (rather than net wealth) to smooth consumption.

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we first document that the recent increase in income inequality in the U.S. has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Much of this divergence is due to different trends in within-group inequality, which has increased significantly for income, but little for consumption. We then develop a simple framework that allows us to characterize analytically how within-group income inequality affects consumption inequality in a world in which agents can trade a full set of contingent consumption claims, subject to endogenous constraints emanating from the limited enforcement of intertemporal contracts. Finally, we quantitatively evaluate, in the context of a calibrated general equilibrium production economy, whether this set-up, or alternatively a standard incomplete markets model, can account for the documented stylized consumption inequality facts from the U.S. data.

\"We build a model of heterogeneous individuals - who make investments in schooling quantity and quality - to quantify the importance of differences in human capital vs. total factor productivity (TFP) in explaining the variation in per capita income across countries. The production of human capital requires expenditures and time inputs; the relative importance of these inputs determines the predictions of the theory for inequality both within and across countries. We discipline our quantitative assessment with a calibration firmly grounded on US micro evidence. Since in our calibrated model economy human capital production requires a significant amount of expenditures, TFP changes affect disproportionately the benefits and costs of human capital accumulation. Our main finding is that human capital accumulation strongly amplifies TFP differences across countries: to explain a 20-fold difference in the output per worker, the model requires a 5-fold difference in the TFP of the tradable sector, vs. an 18-fold difference if human capital is fixed across countries.\" Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: Theoriebildung; Grundlagenforschung; empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1990 bis 1996. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

To study the relationship between house price movements, housing construction, consumption, and international borrowing, they generalize the closed economy asset pricing models developed previously in Adam and Marcet (2010, 2011) and Adam, Marcet, and Nicolini (2010) along three dimensions. First, they consider a setting with two assets, namely a domestically traded risky asset-the housing stock -- and an internationally traded riskless bond. Second, they newly incorporate a borrowing constraint that limits household leverage and the overall amount of borrowing, following Kiyotaki and Moore (1997). Third, they consider a production economy with endogenous asset supply by explicitly incorporating a construction sector. Despite these extensions the model is relatively parsimonious.

While macroeconomics is often thought of as a deeply divided field, with less of a shared core and correspondingly less cumulative progress than other areas of economics, in fact, there are fewer fundamental disagreements among macroeconomists now than in past decades. This is due to important progress in resolving seemingly intractable debates. In this paper, I review some of those debates and outline important elements of the new synthesis in macroeconomic theory. I discusses the extent to which the new developments in theory and research methods are already affecting macroeconomic analysis in policy institutions.

This paper is a critical review of and a reader's guide to a collection of papers by Robert E. Lucas, Jr. about fruitful ways of using general equilibrium theories to understand measured economic aggregates. These beautifully written and wisely argued papers integrated macroeconomics, microeconomics, finance, and econometrics in ways that restructured big parts of macroeconomic research.

Data from a heterogeneous-agents economy with incomplete asset markets and indivisible labor supply are simulated under various fiscal policy regimes and an approximating representative-agent model is estimated. Preference and technology parameter estimates of the representative-agent model are not invariant to policy changes and the bias in the representative-agent model's policy predictions is large compared to predictive intervals that reflect parameter uncertainty. Since it is not always feasible to account for heterogeneity explicitly, it is important to recognize the possibility that the parameters of a highly aggregated model may not be invariant with respect to policy changes.

The single-index model is one of the most popular semiparametric models in applied quantitative sciences. Two new estimation methods have been proposed recently by Hristache, Juditski, and Spokoiny (2001, Annals of Statistics 29, 595–623) and Xia, Tong, Li, and Zhu (2002, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 64, 363–410), respectively. However, their asymptotic distributions have not been investigated yet. In this paper, alternative versions for the methods are investigated. Asymptotic distributions of the estimators are derived. Efficiency comparisons between the estimation methods are made.The author is most grateful to Professor O. Linton and Professor W. Härdle for helpful discussions. Valuable comments from two anonymous reviewers have improved the presentation of the paper substantially. The research has been partially supported by NUS research grant R-155-000-048-112, National University of Singapore, Singapore, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.

Introduces a series of journal articles devoted to the subject. Adapted from the source document.

The quantitative implications of labor-market search for economic fluctuations are evaluated in the context of a real-business-cycle model. Incorporating labor-market search into the model is found to improve its empirical performance along several dimensions. In particular, hours now fluctuate substantially more than wages and the contemporaneous correlation between hours and productivity falls. In addition, the model replicates the observation that output growth displays positive autocorrelation at short horizons. Overall, the empirical results suggest that the labor-market-search environment embodies a quantitatively important propagation mechanism.