Negative correlations between inflation and demographic aging were observed across developed nations recently. To understand the phenomenon from a politico-economic perspective, we embed the fiscal theory of the price level into an overlapping-generations model. In the model, successive...

This paper studies the e ffects of oil producing countries' fuel subsidies on the oil market and the world economy. We identify 24 oil producing countries with fuel subsidies where retail fuel prices are about 34 percent of the world price. We construct a two-country model where one country...

Studies that estimate the Phillips curve for the U.S. use mainly national-level data and find mixed evidence of nonlinearity, with some recent studies either rejecting nonlinearity or estimating only modest convexity. In addition, most studies do not make a distinction between the relative...

I study optimal interest rate policy in a small open economy with consumer search in the product market. When there are search frictions, firms price-to-market, with implications for the design of monetary policy. Country-specific shocks generate deviations from the law of one price for traded...

With integrated trade and financial markets, a collapse in aggregate demand in a large country can cause "natural real interest rates" to fall below zero in all countries, giving rise to a global "liquidity trap." This paper explores the optimal policy response to this type of shock, when...

Remarks before the Dallas Friday Group, Dallas, Texas, October 21, 2011 ; "Absent some shock, I envision a slow but steady improvement in the economy into 2012. That is, if our fiscal authorities will remove their stranglehold on clarifying fiscal initiatives. If not, then, in my view, I expect...

Remarks before the Dallas Friday Group, Dallas, Texas, April 11, 2006 ; "Competition brings benefits to the public sector the same way it does the private sector. Because factors of production are increasingly mobile in an era of globalization, governments vie to gain and hold onto them. Mobile...

Remarks to the 2007 Annual Conference of the Investment Adviser Association, Austin, Texas, April 26, 2007 ; "Many options would improve the fiscal fitness of our entitlement system and reduce the need for drastic action elsewhere in the federal budget. But let's be honest. These remedies work...

Remarks before a luncheon meeting of the Manhattan Institute and e21, New York City, January 12, 2011 ; "The key to correcting the underperformance of the American economy and American job creation does not rest with the Federal Reserve. It is in the hands of those who make fiscal and regulatory...