This note considers Tobin's average Q in a framework where firms finance investment by equities and debt. The determination of its long-run equilibrium value Q° is based on positing equality of the loan rate and, adjusted for a risk premium, the return on equities. Q° can thus be characterized...

The Keynesian stability condition is a necessary assumption for the IS equilibrium concept to make economic sense. With reasonable values for the saving parameter(s), however, it typically implies excessively strong multiplier effects. This is more than a cosmetic issue, not least because any...

This paper derives firms' desired rate of utilization from an explicit maximization of a conjectured rate of profit at the micro level. Invoking a strategic complementarity, desired utilization is thus an increasing function of not only the profit share but also the actual utilization. Drawing...

With reference to the class of asset pricing models with a market maker and mean-variance optimization of speculative agents, the note seeks to clarify the concepts behind the price adjustment rule, which are often treated somewhat carelessly in this literature. Calling attention to the...

The paper is concerned with determinacy in a version of the New-Keynesian model that integrates imperfect competition and nominal price and wage setting on goods and labour markets. The model is reformulated with an explicit period of arbitrary length and shown to remain well-defined as the...

This note is concerned with two recent agent-based models of speculative dynamics from the literature, one by Gaunersdorfer and Hommes and the other by He and Li. At short as well as long lags, both of them display an autocorrelation structure in absolute and squared returns that comes...

In a small-scale New-Keynesian model with a hybrid Phillips curve and IS equation, the paper is concerned with an arbitrary frequency of the agents’ synchronized decision making. It investigates the validity of a fundamental methodological precept according to which no substantive prediction...

In the framework of small-scale agent-based financial market models, the paper starts out from the concept of structural stochastic volatility, which derives from different noise levels in the demand of fundamentalists and chartists and the time-varying market shares of the two groups. It...

The paper considers an elementary New-Keynesian three-equations model and contrasts its Bayesian estimation with the results from the method of moments (MM), which seeks to match the model-generated second moments of inflation, output and the interest rate to their empirical counterparts....