This paper provides an overview and discussion of the legal and economic philosophy of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), a French political economist. A bibliography with links to other Bastiat studies is also included

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) was an economist and journalist. A member of the French Liberal School, he is best known for his free trade ideas and his philosophy of law. Mark Blaug ranks him as one of the 100 greatest economists before Keynes. Schumpeter called him a brilliant economic...

Keynes is back. President Obama's economic stimulus package is based on the premise that we can spend our way out of recession. It is an application of the Keynesian multiplier theory, which was expounded in Keynes' 1936 economic treatise, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money....

The Obama stimulus package has been less than a total success if one is to compare what was predicted to what has been delivered to date. The crux of the problem is that the economic planners have ignored or failed to take into account the secondary effects that increased government spending has...

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a journalist and economic theorist within the French liberal school. He is best known for his writings on free trade and protectionism. Although he has written several classic short treatises, his work has been ignored by most modern economists. This paper will...

I construct an infinite-horizon dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with a collateral constraint and actual default in equilibrium. Entrepreneurs borrow from households through non-recourse debt contracts backed by capital goods. By taking into account the non-linear payoffs of the...

Standard dynamic models of structural transformation, without knife-edge and counterfactual parameter values, preclude balanced growth path (BGP) analysis. This paper develops a dynamic equilibrium concept for a more general class of models | an alternative to a BGP, which we coin a Stable...

The Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that, unlike subprime borrowers, prime borrowers are more likely to own investment homes during recessions than during recoveries. Drawing on this empirical fact, we present and estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that distinguishes...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic and asset pricing consequences of the upward trend in financial market participation observed in the U.S. since the late 1980s. In a limited participation two-agent Real Business Cycle model where stockholders feature external habit preferences, higher...

This paper aims at investigating whether or not a utilitarian social planner should subsidize longevity-enhancing expenditures in an economy with a PAYG pension system. For that purpose, a simple two-period OLG model is developed, in which the length of the second period of life can be raised by...