The objective of this Paper is to propose a number of alternative decentralized interpretations of representative agent style stochastic growth economies and to explore their implications for the generality of this model construct. Under our first interpretation, firms exist forever and...

Exchange rate regimes differ primarily by the activity of the exchange rate, not observable macroeconomic ‘fundamentals’. Fixed exchange rates are typically stable and floating exchange rates are volatile, but macro phenomena are regime-independent. Fundamentals only seem to be relevant for...

A common view in the literature is that the effect of energy price shocks on macroeconomic aggregates is asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases. We show that widely used asymmetric vector autoregressive models of the transmission of energy price shocks are misspecified, resulting in...

The paper presents new stylized facts on the direction of capital flows. We find (i) international capital flows net of government debt and/or official aid are positively correlated with growth; (ii) sovereign debt flows are negatively correlated with growth only if debt is financed by another...

The literature has shown that the implied welfare gains from international financial integration are very small. We revisit the existing findings and document that welfare gains can be substantial if capital goods are not perfect substitutes. We use a model of optimal savings that includes a...