Evolutionary programming as a solution technique for the Bellman equation

Evolutionary programming is a stochastic optimization procedure that has proved useful in optimizing difficult functions. This paper shows that evolutionary programming can be used to solve the Bellman equation problem with a high degree of accuracy and substantially less CPU time than Bellman equation iteration. Future applications will focus on sometimes binding constraints, a class of problem for which standard solutions techniques are not applicable.Programming (Mathematics) ; Econometric models

Iowa electronic markets

In 1998, University of Iowa faculty members created their own futures markets. These experimental markets, designed to provide insights into the behavior of traders and naturally occurring markets, are still going strong. Their clever design gives them another practical use: They can be used to predict future events such as election outcomes and Federal Open Market Committee voting.Futures ; Electronic commerce ; Monetary policy

Free trade and tariffs—an uneasy mix

When U.S. steel corporations began declaring bankruptcy and laying off thousands of workers, tariffs on foreign steel seemed a reasonable way of preventing further damage to the industry. But why do most economists favor free trade?Free trade ; Tariff

Measuring the Welfare Costs of Inflation in a Life-cycle Model

In macroeconomics, life-cycle models are typically used to address exclusively life-cycle issues. This paper shows that modeling the life-cycle may be important when addressing public policy issues, in this case the welfare costs of inflation. In the representative agent model, the optimal inflation rate is characterized by the Friedman rule: deflate at the real interest rate. In the corresponding life-cycle model, the optimal inflation rate is quite high: for the benchmark calibration, it is around 95% per annum. Much of the paper is concerned with understanding this result. Briefly, in the life-cycle model there are distributional consequences of injecting money via lump-sum transfers. The net effect is to transfer income from old, rich agents to young, poor ones. These transfers twist the age-utility profile in a way that agents find desirable from a lifetime utility point of view. A second issue concerns how to assess the costs of inflation in a life-cycle model. Metrics that are equivalent in the representative agent model can give very different answers in a life-cycle model.monetary policy, inflation, welfare costs, life-cycle model

Accounting for the jobless recoveries

Much has been made of the so-called jobless recovery of the past two business cycles—that is, their atypically weak employment growth early in the expansion phase. This Commentary examines the factors that account for this behavior, focusing on two key measures: the probabilities of job finding and job separation.Employment ; Economic conditions ; Job hunting

Canada's money targeting experiment

An inquiry into why the Bank of Canada was unable to bridle the inflation of the 1970s by controlling money growth.Monetary policy - Canada ; Canada ; Inflation (Finance)

Why policymakers might care about stock market bubbles

This Commentary makes a case for Fed action in the event of a stock market bubble. Because stock market prices serve as a signal to business managers to invest, bubbles can mislead managers into investing when it is not profitable. The overinvestment, which becomes apparent after the bubble bursts, can lead to a period of low investment, which can cause a recession. Policymakers may wish to step in to end a bubble before stock prices get too far out of line relative to their fundamentals.Stock market ; Stock - Prices

Evaluating the macroeconomic effects of a temporary investment tax credit

As part of a fiscal stimulus package, some members of Congress have recently proposed a temporary investment subsidy. This paper uses the neoclassical growth model to evaluate the likely macroeconomic effects of such a subsidy. The model predicts a 0.8 percentage point increase in output growth for the quarter in which the policy is implemented. In subsequent quarters, the output growth effects are negligible. As the subsidy ends, output growth falls by 1 percentage point before returning to its trend growth rate. While a permanent subsidy will lead to more capital deepening in the long term, it also represents a permanent fall in government revenues. Under a temporary subsidy, there is less capital deepening but the decline in government revenues is likewise more modest.Fiscal policy ; Tax credits

What labor market theory tells us about the "New Economy"

An investigation of whether economic theory supports the claim that a technology shock can change the "natural rate of unemployment."Unemployment ; Inflation (Finance)

Theory, measurement, and calibration of macroeconomic models

Calibration has become a standard tool of macroeconomics. This paper extends and refines the calibration methodology along several important dimensions. First, accounting for home production is important both in measuring calibration targets and in organizing the data in a model-consistent fashion. For this reason, thinking about home production is important even if the model under consideration does not include home production. Second, investment-specific technological change is included because of its strong balanced growth parameter restrictions. Third, the measurement strategy is laid out as transparently as possible so that others can easily replicate the underlying calculations. The data and calculations used in this paper are available on the web.Econometric models ; Macroeconomics