Data from Dynamics of the Trade Balance and the Terms of Trade; The J-Curve?, American Economic Review, 84:1, March 1994. Quarterly, 1955q1 to 1991q4.

We provide a theoretical interpretation of two features of international data: the countercyclical movements in net exports and the tendency for the trade balance to be negatively correlated with current and future movements in the terms of trade, but positively correlated with past movements....

We examine the behavior of international relative prices from the perspective of dynamic general equilibrium theory, with particular emphasis on the variability of the terms of trade and the relation between the terms of trade and net exports. We highlight aspects of the theory that are critical...

The founding fathers of the Econometric Society defined econometrics to be quantitative economic theory. A vision of theirs was the use of econometrics to provide quantitative answers to business cycle questions. The realization of this dream required a number of advances in pure theory—in...

Two mechanisms are considered through which money can play a role in a real business cycle model. One is in the form of aggregate price surprises when there is heterogeneity across individuals or groups of individuals (“islands”). These shocks affect the accuracy of information about real...

An economic experiment consists of the act of placing people in an environment desired by the experimenter, who then records the time paths of their economic behavior. Performing experiments that use actual people at the level of national economies is obviously not practical, but constructing a...

Previous business cycle models have made the assumption that all the variation in the labor input is either due to changes in hours per worker or changes in number of workers, but not both. In this paper, both vary. We think this a better model for estimating the contribution of Solow technology...

We provide an introduction to optimal fiscal and monetary policy using the primal approach to optimal taxation. We use this approach to address how fiscal and monetary policy should be set over the long run and over the business cycle. We find four substantive lessons for policymaking: Capital...