The theoretical literature on generational risk assumes that this risk is large and that the government can effectively share it. To assess these assumptions, this paper simulates a realistically calibrated 80-period overlapping generations life-cycle model with aggregate productivity shocks....

Aggregate hours worked per working-age person decreased in Austria by 25% from 1970 to 2005. During the same time period, taxes increased, particularly the effective marginal tax rate on labor income. Using a standard general equilibrium growth model with taxes, I quantitatively assess the role...

The paper focuses on tools of tax policy used as an element of a pro-family policy in France and in Germany. The author intends to prove, using France as an example, that properly developed tax system may stimulate the fertility rate rise. Formulated recommendations for Poland are followed by a...

In this article, as part of the symposium on total factor productivity, Richard G. Lipsey of Simon Fraser University and Kenneth Carlaw of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand provide a trenchant critique of the concept of total factor productivity. They conclude that "the degree of...

During the period 1994-2001 the Colombian economy experienced on of the most intensive business cycles of the twenty century, mostly due to the depression phase. In this paper we made an assessment or a hypothetical cause of this business cycle: a positive (and transitory and unexpected) shock...

El período 1994-2001 correspondió al de un ciclo de la economía colombiana, especialmente intenso sobretodo en lo que se refiere a la magnitud de la depresión ocurrida entre 1998 y 2001. En el presente documento se describe la construcción y el uso de un modelo de equilibrio general...

A discussion of the importance for economics of Kydland and Prescott's (1982) classic "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations". A report submitted to The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in support of the The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for Finn E....

We compare theoretical and empirical forecasts computed by rational agents living in a model economy to those produced by professional forecasters. We focus on the variance of the prediction errors as a function of the forecast horizon and analyze the speed with which it converges to a constant...

This paper develops a globally convergent algorithm which modifies standard block Gauss-Seidel iterations used by tatonnement methods for solving large scale deterministic heterogenous agent models. It is shown that the restrictions on the structure of the Jacobi matrix implicit in any such...

In the aftermath of the rational expectations debate and the onslaught of the New Classical economics,some builders of macroeconometric models have begun to change some of their habits, arguably for the better. In particular,neoclassical discipline is increasingly respected in the formulation of...