We consider a neoclassical economy where households derive utility from holding wealth. We show that, under some conditions, there can be rational bubbles. Hence, we provide a microfoundation for bubbles that relies on a frictionless infinite-horizon economy without any heterogeneity across...

Fiscal policy has become quite controversial in the post-Keynesian era, the debate over the Obama stimulus package being a contentious recent example. Some pundits go so far as to take the position that macroeconomic theory has failed to meaningfully progress in terms of providing useful...

This paper undertakes a normative investigation of the quantitative properties of optimal tax smoothing in a business cycle model with state contingent debt, capital-skill complementarity, endogenous skill formation and stochastic shocks to public consumption as well as total factor and capital...

In this paper we use the property that certainty equivalence, as implied by a first-order approximation to the solution of stochastic discrete-time models, breaks in its equivalent continuous-time version. We study the extent to which a first-order approximated solution built by perturbation...

This paper investigates the interdependence between the risk-pooling activity of the financial sector and: output, consumption, risk-free rate, and Sharpe ratio in a dynamic general equilibrium model of a productive economy. Due to their exposure to idiosyncratic shocks and market segmentation,...

In this paper we suggest that Eurozone countries face a policy trade-off among: 1) a common rule imposing co-movements in fiscal policy; 2) financial stability; and 3) financial integration. We provide empirical evidence documenting the existence of such a trade-off in the period characterized...

Motivated by the world-wide surge of FinTech lending, we analyze the implications of lenders' information technology adoption for financial stability. We estimate bank-level intensity of IT adoption before the global financial crisis using a novel dataset that provides information on hardware...

Financial sector development plays an important role in promoting economic growth and welfare of the citizen of a country. On the other hand, financial sector instability or vulnerability, can adversely affect the economic growth and cause major disruptions in the country. This paper examines...

Consumption risk sharing among U.S. federal states increases in booms and decreases in recessions. We find that small firms' access to credit markets plays an important role in explaining this stylized fact: business cycle fluctuations in aggregate risk sharing are more pronounced in states in...

The business cycles theories of Wicksell (1898), Schumpeter (1912), Mises (1912), Hayek (1929, 1935) and Minsky (1986, 1992) explain business cycles by distorted prices on capital markets, buoyant credit expansion and overinvestment. The exuberance during the boom endogenously causes the...