This paper studies a general equilibrium economy in which agents have the ability to invest in a risky technology. The investment risk cannot be fully insured with optimal contracts because shocks are private information. We show that the presence of investment risks lead to under-accumulation of capital relative to an economy where idiosyncratic shocks can be fully insured. We also show that t...

An Empirical Model of Growth Through Product Innovation Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. The purpose of the paper is to estimate the structure of an equilibrium model of growth through innovation that explains these facts. The model is a modified version of the Schumpeterian theory of...

This paper presents an analytically tractable continuous-time general equilibrium model with investment irreversibility and fixed adjustment costs. In the model, there is a continuum of firms that are subject to idiosyncratic shocks to capital. Although the presence of investment frictions lowers consumer welfare, it may raise or reduce the long-run average capital stock, depending on the degre...

Using a recursive empirical model of the real interest rate, GDP growth and the primary government deficit in the United States, I solve for the ergodic distribution of the debt/GDP ratio. If such a distribution exists, the government is satisfying its intertemporal budget constraint. One key finding is that historical fiscal policy would bring the current high-debt ratio back to its normal lev...

The factors behind the increase in the relative wages of skilled workers in developing countries are still not well understood. The authors use data from Peru to analyze the determinants of withinindustry share of skilled workers. They use a translog cost function for gross output and are therefore able to incorporate the effects of materials, both domestic and imported, in addition to capital....

We assess the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on corporate investment in an investment Euler equation framework, where a dummy for the passage of the Act is allowed to affect the rate at which managers discount future investment payoffs. Using generalized method of moments estimators, we find that the rate U.S. firm managers apply to discount investment projects rises significantly aft...

This paper makes three main points. Fiscal policy, …rst, may be needed in the long run to maintain full employment and avoid secular stagnation. If …scal policy is used in this way, second, the long-run debt ratio depends (i) inversely on the rate of growth, (ii) inversely on government consumption, and (iii) directly on the degree of inequality. The analysis, third, suggests that policies and ...

Inventory fluctuations are an important phenomenon in business cycles. However, the preliminary data on inventory investment as published in the German national accounts are tremendously prone to revision and therefore ill-equipped to diagnose the current stance of the inventory cycle. The Ifo business survey contains information on the assessments of inventory stocks in manufacturing as well a...

This paper studies the effect of terrorist attacks on the internal structure of cities. We develop an urban framework with capital structures suitable for the study of this question and analyze the long and short term implications of this type of events. In the long run, the analysis shows that a terrorist attack will affect urban structure only modestly, relative to the potentially large decre...

This paper makes three main points. Fiscal policy, …rst, may be needed in the long run to maintain full employment and avoid secular stagnation. If …scal policy is used in this way, second, the long-run debt ratio depends (i) inversely on the rate of growth, (ii) inversely on government consumption, and (iii) directly on the degree of inequality. The analysis, third, suggests that policies and ...