Is Inflation Persistence Over?

We analyze inflation persistence in several industrial and emerging countries in the recent past by estimating reduced-form models of inflation dynamics. We select a very representative group of 23 industrial and 17 emerging economies. Our sample period is comprised of quarterly data and starts in the first quarter of 1995. Our results show that inflation persistence is low and stable for all countries in our sample. It seems to be lower in industrial relative to emerging countries. Finally, even countries that have had “hyperinflation” experience in the recent past showed low levels of inflation persistence, albeit apparently higher than the other countries in our sample.

Inter-temporal discounting and uniform impatience

The uniform impatience hypothesis, a joint requirement on endowments and preferences, was imposed in the literature to prove equilibrium existence in infinite horizon sequential economies. In this note, we characterize this assumption in terms of asymptotic properties on inter-temporal discount factors.Uniform impatience, inter-temporal discounting. JEL Codes: D50, D52.

Welfare-improving debt constraints

We show that in economies without liquidity frictions, but with incomplete financial markets, when agents are infinitely lived and uniformly impatient, money can still be essential (that is, have a positive price in equilibrium) if and only if each agent has binding debt constraints at some node of her life span. That is, contrary to what might be expected, in the absence of a very productive financial market, frictions induced by debt constraints create some room for improving efficiency, by allowing money to have a role in transferring wealth across dates and states of nature.Cashless economies, Binding debt constraints, Fundamental value of money.

Fiat money and the value of binding portfolio constraints

We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the individual optimality of a consumption-portfolio plan in an infinite horizon economy where agents are uniformly impatient and fiat money is the only asset available for inter-temporal transfers of wealth. Next, we show that fiat money has a positive equilibrium price if and only if for some agent the zero short sale constraint is binding and has a positive shadow price (now or in the future). As there is always an agent that is long, it follows that marginal rates of inter-temporal substitution never coincide across agents. That is, monetary equilibria are never full Pareto efficient. We also give a counter-example illustrating the occurrence of monetary bubbles under incomplete markets in the absence of uniform impatience

Fiat money and the value of binding portfolio constraints

We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the individual optimality of a consumption-portfolio plan in an infinite horizon economy where agents are uniformly impatient and fiat money is the only asset available for inter-temporal transfers of wealth. Next, we show that fiat money has a positive equilibrium price if and only if for some agent the zero short sale constraint is binding and has a positive shadow price (now or in the future). As there is always an agent that is long, it follows that marginal rates of inter-temporal substitution never coincide across agents. That is, monetary equilibria are never full Pareto efficient. We also give a counter-example illustrating the occurrence of monetary bubbles under incomplete markets in the absence of uniform impatience

Fiat money and the value of binding portfolio constraints

We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the individual optimality of a consumption-portfolio plan in an infinite horizon economy where agents are uniformly impatient and fiat money is the only asset available for intertemporal transfers of wealth. Next, we show that fiat money has a positive equilibrium price if and only if for some agent the zero short sale constraint is binding and has a positive shadow price (now or in the future). As there is always an agent that is long, it follows that marginal rates of intertemporal substitution never coincide across agents. That is, monetary equilibria are never full Pareto efficient. We also give a counter-example illustrating the occurrence of monetary bubbles under incomplete markets in the absence of uniform impatience

[pt] TRÊS ENSAIOS EM EQUILÍBRIO GERAL

O objetivo desta tese é entender o papel de frições de credito em modelos de Equilíbrio Geral com mercados financeiros incompletos. Primeiro, o trabalho estuda a importância das restrições ao endividamento dos agentes para a existência de equilíbrio monetário em uma economia com informação simétrica onde a moeda (aqui caracterizada como um ativo que não paga dividendos, pode ser vendido a descoberto e está em oferta líquida positiva) tem apenas o papel de reserva de valor e é o único ativo da economia. Além disso, mostra que, apesar da moeda possibilitar as transferências de riqueza intertemporais e entre os estados da natureza, o equilíbrio monetário ainda é Pareto ineficiente. A tese também caracteriza a hipótese de impaciência uniforme, um importante requerimento para a existência de equilibrio, em termos das propriedades assintóticas dos fatores de desconto intertemporal. Como consequência, mostra que desconto hiperbólico é incompatível com a impaciência uniforme de funções de utilidade separáveis. Finalmente, mostra que, se os ativos financeiros são colateralizados para a proteção dos emprestadores em caso de default, sempre existe equilíbrio em um modelo de dois períodos com mercados incompletos e informação assimétrica onde os ativos são nominais, independente da estrutura informacional.This thesis aims to understand the role of credit frictions in general equilibrium models with incomplete financial markets. First, this work studies the importance of debt constraints for the existence of monetary equilibrium in an economy with symmetric information and where money has only the role of store of value. It also characterizes the uniform impatience assumption, an important requirement to equilibrium existence, in terms of asymptotic properties on intertemporal discount factors. Finally, it shows that, if assets are collateralized in order to protect lenders in the case of default, equilibrium always exists in a two-period incomplete markets model of asymmetric information with nominal assets, independently of the financial-informational structure

Collateralized assets and asymmetric information

Introducing assets backed by physical collateral, we extend the [Cornet, B., De Boisdeffre, L., 2002. Arbitrage and price revelation with asymmetric information and incomplete markets. Journal of Mathematical Economics 38, 393–490.] model of asymmetric information to allow for default. We show that, independently of the financial-informational structure, equilibrium exists

Is Inflation Persistence Over?

We analyze inflation persistence in several industrial and emerging countries in the recent past by implementing unit root tests in the presence of unknown structural breaks and by estimating reduced-form models of inflation dynamics. We select a very representative group of 23 industrial and 17 emerging economies. Our sample period is comprised of quarterly data and differs for each country. Our results indicate that inflation persistence is decreasing over time for the great majority of industrial economies. Many emerging economies, however, show increasing persistence and even a few have highly persistent inflationary processes. We also observe structural breaks in all inflation processes we study with the exception of the inflation processes of Germany and Austria. Our results are robust to different reduced forms of the inflation processes and different econometric techniques