We estimate a small open economy RBC model augmented with a simple form of financial frictions using Spanish data and Bayesian methods. The estimated model matches well with key Spanish business cycle statistics. Using the estimated model, we find that significant welfare benefits may accrue...

This paper reconsiders various hypotheses tested in the literature concerning income smoothing, the big bath, financial distress, debt covenants, management turnover, ownership structure, and auditors. The results show that changes in accounting policy have been carried out for income smoothing....

This paper argues that a major beneficial impact of workfare programs is through their role in allowing participants to improve their access to “credit”. Sustained program participation serves as “collateral” for households’ acquisition of informal credit, leading to the improvement in...

We apply a Ramsey-type analysis to a standard sticky price, small open economy model, examining the welfare implications of optimal capital controls under fixed exchange rates and optimal monetary policy under flexible exchange rates. We show that capital controls can significantly reduce the...

This paper characterizes the interactions among studying abroad, return migration, and capital accumulation, in a two-country overlapping generations model with households of heterogeneous ability. The model exhibits positive selection of migration status (i.e., permanent, return, and...

This paper aims to examine the factors which affect the market shares of several nonprofit and for-profit providers in the long-term care insurance system. We focus on the impact of market size and growth, demand heterogeneity and philanthropic activities, using a prefectural panel data set. The...

A veteran finance minister, Takahashi Korekiyo, brought an early recovery for Japan from the Great Depression of the 1930s by prescribing a combination of expansionary fiscal, exchange rate, and monetary policies. To explore the comprehensive transmission mechanism of Takahashi's macroeconomic...

The study, which makes extensive use of official Holding Company Liquidation Commission (HCLC) documents possessed by the National Archives of Japan, examines accounting practices adopted by three Japanese mining corporations in their dissolution in the immediate postwar period from 1946 to...

In this paper we show that multiple interior steady states are possible in the Ramsey model with elastic labor supply. In particular we establish the following three results: (i) for any discount factor and production function, there is a utility function such that a continuum of interior steady...

This paper re-examines the empirical evidence on the potency of Japanese monetary policy in the 1990s by comparing the estimated impacts of various proxies of monetary policy shocks on the macro economy. My empirical results demonstrate that the surprise target changes as a proxy of monetary...