Aggregate Supply and Potential Output

The New-Keynesian aggregate supply derives from micro-foundations an inflation-dynamics model very much like the tradition in the monetary literature. Inflation is primarily affected by: (i) economic slack; (ii) expectations; (iii) supply shocks; and (iv) inflation persistence. This paper extends the New Keynesian aggregate supply relationship to include also fluctuations in potential output, as an additional determinant of the relationship. Implications for monetary rules and to the estimation of the Phillips curve are pointed out.

Globalization and Disinflation: A Note

The note analyzes how globalization forces induce monetary authorities, guided in their policies by the welfare criterion of a representative household, to put greater emphasis on reducing the inflation rate than on narrowing the output gaps.

Policy implications of demographic change: panel discussion: notes on demographic changes and the welfare state

The flow of unskilled, low-earning migrants to developed countries with a comprehensive social security system, including retirement benefits, has attracted both public and academic attention in recent years. Being relatively low earners, the migrants typically are net beneficiaries of the welfare state in the short run. Therefore, an almost unanimous opposition to migration may arise in the potential host countries.Demography ; Economic conditions ; Pensions ; Emigration and immigration

Fiscal Policies and the Stock Market: International Dimensions

The dynamic effects of fiscal policies on the real equilibrium have been the subject of a large body of recent research, emphasizing the intertemporal dimensions of tax and spending policies both in closed and open-economy contexts. The analysis in this paper extends the intertemporal analysis which was conducted under full certainty to uncertain environments. Specifically the paper uses a two-country stochastic general- equilibrium model of the world economy to address issues concerning the effects of government tax and spending policies on private sector consumption asset portfolios and stock market valuations. The key result of the paper is that the consequences of expected future policies and the characteristics of their international transmission depend critically on the precise variability of these policies across states of nature. The effects of current policies on consumption savings and stock market prices are shown, however to conform closely to the predictions of the corresponding certainty intertemporal model.

FDI Contribution to Capital Flows and Investment in Capacity

The paper surveys a theory of FDI, which captures a unique feature: hands-on management standards, that enable investors to react in real time to a changing economic environment. Equipped with superior managerial skills, foreign direct investors are able to outbid portfolio investors for the top productivity firms in a particular industry in which they have specialized in the source country. Consequently, FDI investors would make investment, both larger, and of higher quality (namely, with large rates of returns), than the domestic investors. The theory can explain both two-way FDI flows among developed countries, and one-way FDI flows from developed to developing countries. Gains to the host country from FDI stem from the informational value of FDI. The predictions of the theory are consistent with evidence from panel data: larger FDI coefficients in the domestic investment and output growth regressions relative to the portfolio equity flow and international loan coefficients, reflect a more significant role for FDI in the domestic investment process than other types of capital inflows.

Free vs. Restricted Immigration: Bilateral Country Study

This paper tests the differential effects of the generosity of the welfare state under free migration and under policy-controlled migration, distinguishing between source developing and developed countries. We utilize free-movement within the EU to examine the free migration regime and compare that to immigration into the EU from two other groups, developed and developing source countries, to capture immigration-restricted regimes. We standardize cross-country education quality differences by using the Hanushek-Woessmann (2009) cognitive skills measure. We find strong support for the "magnet hypothesis" under the free-migration regime, and the "fiscal burden hypothesis" under the immigration-restricted regime even after controlling for differences in returns to skills in source and host countries

Evaluation of Currency Regimes: The Unique Role of Sudden Stops

This paper tackles two established puzzles in international macroeconomics literature. The first is the lack of systematic difference in the macroeconomic performance across exchange rate regimes. The second is the absence of a clear empirical relationship between macroeconomic performance and capital-account liberalization. We suggest that both may appear because empirical methodologies fail to account for a latent economic "crisis state," influenced by exchange-rate and capital account regimes, and to allow the effects of a policy regime on growth to depend on whether the economy is in a crisis-prone latent state. In practice, we model and estimate the latent state of the economy as a crisis probability. In the framework we propose, exchange rate and capital market liberalization regimes can have both a direct effect on short-term growth, and an indirect effect on growth that is channelled through their effects on the crisis probability.

Welfare Migration: Is the Net Fiscal Burden a Good Measure of its Economics Impact on the Welfare of the Native-Born Population?

Migration of young workers (as distinct from retirees), even when driven in by the generosity of the welfare state, slows down the trend of increasing dependency ratio. But, even though low-skill migration improves the dependency ratio, it nevertheless burdens the welfare state. Recent studies by Smith and Edmonston (1977), and Sinn et al (2003) comprehensively estimate the fiscal burden that low-skill migration imposes on the fiscal system. However, an important message of this paper is that in an infinite-horizon set-up, one cannot fully grasp the implications of migration for the welfare state just by looking at the net fiscal burden that migrants impose on the fiscal system. In an infinite-horizon, overlapping generations economy, this net burden could change to net gain to the native-born population.migration, welfare state, fiscal burden

The Role of Immigration in Sustaining the Social Security System: A Political Economy Approach

In the political debate people express the idea that immigrants are good because they can help pay for the old. The paper explores this idea in a dynamic political-economy setup. We characterize sub-game perfect Markov equilibria where immigration policy and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security system are jointly determined through a majority voting process. The main feature of the model is that immigrants are desirable for the sustainability of the social security system, because the political system is able to manipulate the ratio of old to young and thereby the coalition which supports future high social security benefits. We demonstrate that the older is the native born population the more likely is that the immigration policy is liberalized; which in turn has a positive effect on the sustainability of the social security system.