Publicly held debt to GDP ratio in the U.S. has reached 68% in 2011 and is expected to continue rising. Many proposals regarding the ways to curb the government deficit and the resulting debt are being discussed. In this paper, we use the standard neoclassical growth model to examine the...

Japanese and U.S. saving rates have been significantly different over the last forty years. Can a standard growth model explain this difference? The answer is yes. Our results indicate that both an infinite horizon, complete markets setup and an overlapping generations model with incomplete...

Despite much work economists have not been able to quantitatively account for the differences in the Japanese and U.S. saving rates after World War II. In this paper, we show that the use of actual Japanese Total Factor Productivity growth rates in a standard growth model generates saving rates...

Low frequency changes in the U.S. current account can be understood in terms of the influence of differences in productivity growth rates across time and across countries using standard growth theory. In particular, the secular decline is primarily driven by the increase in the U.S. TFP growth...

National saving rate in the U.S. has been declining since the 1960s while the share of consumption in output has been increasing. We explore if a standard growth model can explain the secular trends observed in this time period. Our results indicate that the standard neoclassical growth model is...

The U.S. national saving rate has been declining since the 1960s while the share of consumption in output has been increasing. We explore if a standard growth model can explain the secular movements observed in this time period. Our quantitative findings indicate that the standard neoclassical...

Publicly held debt to GDP ratio in the U.S. is estimated to be 72% in 2011 and is expected to continue rising. Many proposals regarding the ways to curb the government deficit and the resulting debt are being discussed. In this paper we incorporate these different policy proposals in a fully...

Our results indicate that despite the large demographics changes that took place, medium term fluctuations in hours worked are hardly impacted by them.