China’s average household saving rate is one of the highest in the world. One popular view attributes the high saving rate to fast-rising housing prices and other living costs in China. This article uses simple economic logic to show that rising housing prices and living costs per se cannot...

First-order approximation methods are a standard technique for analyzing the local dynamics of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Although linear methods yield quite accurate solutions for a broad class of DSGE models, some important economic issues (e.g., portfolio choice and...

Postwar U.S. data show that consumption growth "Granger-causes" output and investment growth, which is puzzling if technology is the driving force of the business cycle. The author asks whether general equilibrium models with information frictions and non-technology shocks can rationalize the...