Trust in policy makers fluctuates significantly over the cycle and affects the transmission mechanism. Despite this it is absent from the literature. We build a monetary model embedding trust cycles; the latter emerge as an equilibrium phenomenon of a game-theoretic interaction between atomistic...

We analyze a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium (DSGE) model with an externality---through climate change---from using fossil energy. A central result of our paper is an analytical derivation of a simple formula for the marginal externality damage of emissions. This formula, which holds...

This paper models, for the first time, the relationship between gender quotas and the quality of elected public officials. In our economy, females and males can be either high or low-skill. The number of high-skill individuals elected for public office determines the overall quality of...

Flexible labor markets require geographically mobile workers to be efficient. Otherwise, firms can take advantage of the immobility of workers and extract monopsony rents. In cultures with strong family ties, moving away from home is costly. Thus, individuals with strong family ties rationally...

Convergence in per capita income across countries turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local in a large class of models. This Paper estimates the amount of spillovers from R&D expenditures in major industrialized countries on a geographic basis. A new data set is...

In this paper we argue that the persistent global imbalances, the subprime crisis, and the volatile oil and asset prices that followed it, are tightly interconnected. They all stem from a global environment where sound and liquid financial assets are in scarce supply. Our story goes as follows:...

This paper studies regimes of managed exchange rates for a small open economy with an integrated capital market, rational expectations in financial markets, sluggish nominal wages and prices, and supply shocks that follow a Brownian motion. Each regime can be characterized by the degree to which...

A large econometric literature has found that post-war US inflation exhibits very high persistence, approaching that of a random walk process. Given similar evidence for other OECD countries, many macroeconomists have concluded that high inflation persistence is a 'stylized fact'. The objective...

This paper investigates the sources of the widely noticed reduction in the volatility of American business cycles since the mid 1980s. Our analysis of reduced volatility emphasizes the sharp decline in the standard deviation of changes in real GDP, of the output gap, and of the inflation rate....

This paper develops an agency model in which firms can influence their own incentives to provide a non-contractible effort by contracting on other variables (e.g. by committing themselves to some verifiable investment). In such a model the firms' need for outside finance is shown to interact...