Quantitative theory and econometrics

Econometrics ; Money theory

Opthalmic Teaching Problems: The Ayes Have It

The problems associated with the teaching of ophthalmology to medical students in today\u27s university setting are by no means unique to ophthalmology. However, these problems are more severe in small departments such as ophthalmology and are more disruptive to the teaching process than similar problems in larger departments. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the more important teaching problems and propose solutions to them

Commentary on "House prices and the stance of monetary policy "

Monetary policy ; Housing - Prices

Discretionary policy and multiple equilibria

Monetary policy ; Equilibrium (Economics)

Time-Separable Preference and Intertemporal-Substitution Models of Business Cycles

Time-separability of utility means that past work and consumption do not influence current and future tastes. This form of preferences does not restrict the size of intertemporal-substitution effects--notably, we can still have a strong response of labor supply to temporary changes in wages. However, there are important constraints on the relative responses of leisure and consumption to changes in relative-price and in permanent income. When the usual aggregation is permissible, time-separability has some important implications for equilibrium theories of the business cycle. Neglecting investment, we, find that changes in perceptions about the future -- which night appear currently as income effects -- have no influence on current equilibrium output. With investment included, no combination of income effects and shifts to the perceived profitability of investment will yield positive co-movements of output, employment, investment and consumption. Therefore, misperceived monetary disturbances or other sources of changed beliefs about the future cannot be used to generate empirically recognizable business cycles. Some richer specifications of intertemporal production opportunities may eventually yield more satisfactory answers. Because of the positive correlation between cyclical movements of consumption and work, equilibrium theories with time-separable preferences inevitably predict a procyclical behavior for the real wage rate, arising from shifts to labor's marginal product. Empirically, we regard the cyclical behavior of real wages as an open question. Aside from analyzing autonomous real shocks to productivity, we suggest that such shifts may occur as firms vary their capital utilization in response to intertemporal relative prices. However, we still lack some parts of a complete theory.

Sticky Prices, Money and Business Fluctuations

Can nominal contracts make a difference for the neutrality of money if these arise endogenously in general equilibrium? This paper utilizes aversion of Lucas's seminal equilibrium business cycle theory to address this question. However, we depart from Lucas in assuming that (1) agents have complete information about the money stock; (ii) fundamental shocks to the system are purely redistributive and private information; and (iii) moral hazard precludes conventional insurance markets.With an exogenous restriction on contracts, money is fully neutral. But, when this restrictionis lifted, efficient risk-sharing between suppliers and demanders leads to a potential nonneutralitv of money. In particular, if an increase in the money growth rate signals a rise in the dispersion of shocks to demanders' wealth,then prices adjust only partially to monetary shocks and there is a positive association between money and output.

Monetary discretion, pricing complementarity and dynamic multiple equilibria

In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point in time, the discretionary monetary authority optimally accommodates the level of predetermined prices when setting the money supply because it is concerned solely about real activity. Hence, if other firms set a high price in the current period, an individual firm will optimally choose a high price because it knows that the monetary authority next period will accommodate with a high money supply. Under commitment, the mechanism generating complementarity is absent: the monetary authority commits not to respond to future predetermined prices. Multiple equilibria also arise in other similar contexts where (i) a policymaker cannot commit, and (ii) forward-looking agents determine a state variable to which future policy respond. JEL Klassifikation: E5, E61, D7

Banking and Insurance

This paper studies the economic role of financial institutions in economies where agents' incomes are subject to privately observable, idiosyncratic random events. The information structure precludes conventional insurance arrangements. However, a financial institution -- perhaps best viewed as a savings bank -- can provide partial insurance by generating a time pattern of deposit returns that redistributes wealth from agents with high incomes to those with low incomes, resulting in a level of expected utility higher than that achievable in simple security markets. Insurance is incomplete because the bank faces a tradeoff between provision of insurance and maintenance of private incentives.