We present a dynamic model of the interaction between interest groups and policymakers, featuring endogenous interest group formation. We show that complicated dynamic patterns in economic policies may arise once interest group formation is taken into account. <BR><BR>

We analyze the impact of obsolescence of economic inventions by incorporating maintenance costs in the endogenous growth model of expanding product varieties. This contrasts with the existing literature, which ignores maintenance costs and uses the model of quality improvements to describe...

The dynamic properties of micro based stochastic macro models are often analyzed through a linearization around the associated deterministic steady state. Recent literature has investigated the error made by such a deterministic approximation. Complementary to this literature we investigate how...

We analyze the empirical violation of the Hillman condition, a necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices. Our comprehensive data set allows us to investigate the Hillman condition for virtually all countries of the...

In applied work in macroeconomics and finance, nonoptimal infinite horizon economies are often studied in which the state-space is unbounded. Important examples of such economies are single-sector growth models with production externalities, valued fiat money, monopolistic competition, and/or...

In this paper the well-known minimax theorems of Wald, Ville and Von Neumann are generalized under weaker topological conditions on the payoff function <i>f</i> and/or extended to the larger set of the Borel probability measures instead of the set of mixed strategies.

We study the existence problem of a zero point of a function defined on a finite set of elements of the integer lattice of the n-dimensional Euclidean space. It is assumed that the set is integrally convex, which implies that the convex hull of the set can be subdivided in simplices such that...

The recent macroeconomic literature stresses the importance of managing heterogeneous expectations in the formulation of monetary policy. We use a stylized macro model of Howitt (1992) to investigate inflation dynamics under alternative interest rate rules when agents have heterogeneous...

We develop a methodology for studying ''large deviations type'' questions. Our approach does not require that the large deviations principle holds, and is thus applicable to a larg class of systems. We study a system of queues with exponential servers, which share an arrival stream. Arrivals are...

In this paper we present two general results on the existence of a discrete zero point of a function from the <I>n</I>-dimensional integer lattice Z<SUP><I>n</SUP></I> to the <I>n</I>-dimensional Euclidean space R<SUP><I>n</SUP></I>. Under two different boundary conditions, we give a constructive proof using a combinatorial argument based on a...</i></sup></i></i></sup></i>