This paper characterizes jointly optimal default and exchange-rate policy in a small open economy with limited enforcement of debt contracts and downward nominal wage rigidity. Under optimal policy, default occurs during contractions and is accompanied by large devaluations. The latter inflate...

This paper proposes a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that endoge­nously generates inflation persistence. We assume that although firms change prices periodically, they face convex costs that preclude optimal adjustment. In essence, the model assumes that price stickiness arises...

The generation and implementation of ideas, or knowledge, is crucial for economic performance. We study this process in a model of endogenous growth with frictions. Productivity increases with knowledge, which advances via innovation, and with the exchange of ideas from those who generate them...

We build a variation of the neoclassical growth model in which financial shocks to households or wealth shocks (in the sense of wealth destruction) generate recessions. Two standard ingredients that are necessary are (1) the existence of adjustment costs that make the expansion of the tradable...

This paper explores similarities and differences between the run-up of oil prices in 2007â??08 and earlier oil price shocks, looking at what caused the price increase and what effects it had on the economy. Whereas historical oil price shocks were primarily caused by physical disruptions of...

A model is developed in which firms in a financial system have to settle their debts to each other by using a liquid asset (or money). The question studied is how many firms must have access to this asset from outside the financial system to make sure that all debts within the system are...

We argue that the government spending multiplier can be very large when the nominal interest rate is constant. We focus on a natural case in which the interest rate is constant, which is when the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates binds. For the economies that we consider it is optimal...

Gauti B. Eggertsson's paper (published in NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2010) represents an important contribution to the analysis of fiscal policy in the New Keynesian model when the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate is binding. The paper accomplishes a great deal. It analyzes two...

Tax and transfer programs are analyzed in the context of a model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks and incomplete markets. The effects are contrasted with those obtained in a stand-in household model featuring no idiosyncratic shocks and complete markets. The main finding is that the impact...

Monetary DSGE models are widely used because they fit the data well and can be used to address important monetary policy questions. We provide a selective review of these developments. Policy analysis with DSGE models requires using data to assign numerical values to model parameters. The paper...