We implement a new approach for the identification of "news shocks" about future technology. In a VAR featuring a measure of aggregate technology and several forward-looking variables, we identify the news shock as the shock orthogonal to technology innovations that best explains future...

More advanced technologies demand higher degrees of specialization - and longer chains of production connecting raw inputs to final outputs. Longer production chains are subject to a "weakest link" effect: they are more fragile and more prone to failure. Optimal chain length is determined by the...

This paper studies China's four-fold increase in per capita GDP relative to the U.S. between 1995 and 2019. First, we argue that China's growth pattern is very similar to that of several other East Asia economies that initially grew very quickly. Second, we show that a minimalist...

Dynastic management is the inter-generational transmission of control over assets that is typical of family-owned firms. It is pervasive around the world, but especially in developing countries. We argue that dynastic management is a potential source of inefficiency: if the heir to the family...

This paper presents a Keynesian critique of Steve Keen's treatment of the aggregate demand–credit–endogenous money nexus. It argues his analytic intuition is correct but is developed in the wrong direction. Keen's fundamental relation describing determination of AD in an endogenous...

This paper evaluates the concepts of natural rates of interest and output in Woodford's "neo-Wicksellian" and "benchmark New Keynesian" version of the New Neoclassical Synthesis (NNS) by comparing them with the original approach of Wicksell and critical assessments and adaptations by Lindahl,...

What drives countercyclical volatility? A large literature has documented that many economic variables are more disperse in recessions, but this could either occur because shocks get bigger or because firms respond more to shocks which are the same size. Existing evidence that the dispersion of...

Labour productivity distribution (dispersion) is studied within the framework of statistical physics and the result is compared with the outcome of the empirical analysis. Superstatistics is presented as a natural theoretical framework for the productivity distribution. The demand index ê is...

Dynamic optimizing models with an IS-LM-type structure and slow price adjustments have been used for much recent monetary policy analysis, but usually with capital and investment treated as exogenous a significant restriction. This paper demonstrates that investment decisions can be endogenized...

We study the effects of changes in uncertainty about future fiscal policy on aggregate economic activity. Fiscal deficits and public debt have risen sharply in the wake of the financial crisis. While these developments make fiscal consolidation inevitable, there is considerable uncertainty about...