The probability that an unskilled worker can be successfully trained and or screened to be a manager depends on the effort of the firm. With positive hiring costs, a firm prefers to train/screen its own managers. However the optimal size of the firm for productive efficiency may conflict with...

This paper studies the supply and demand for on-the- job training when the success of training is stochastic, firms have to pay hiring costs when they hire skilled workers from the outside, and firms have strictly concave production functions. There are predictions about firm level dynamics and...

Recent monetary history has been characterized by monetary authorities that appear to shift periodically between distinct policy regimes associated with higher or lower average rates of money creation. As policy regimes are not directly observable and as the rate of monetary expansion varies for...

Canadian policymakers currently adhere to the view that the benefits of establishing and maintaining price stability (near-zero inflation) are "many and large" and that the costs are "small and temporary". This paper, in contrast, warns about the lightness of zero-inflation optimism. Evidence...

This paper aims at improving the measure of how much of the business cycle can be explained by technology innovations. For this, we measure the Solow residuals and calibrate a two country real business cycle model for 19 economies. A new procedure is used to determine the elasticity of...

International real business cycle models are not able to account for the high volatility of imports, exports, the trade balance and the terms of trade. By introducing exogenous exchange rate movements in addition to standard technological shocks, the model presented here comes much closer to...

Canada has now almost eliminated inflation, but it is still struggling with a slow productivity growth, high and persistent unemployment, and large fiscal and external deficits. This essay reviews the identifiables causes and consequences of this evolution, and draws a number of lessons for the...

Nous présentons une version simple du modèle dynamique d'équilibre général de la transmission internationale du cycle économique. Nous analysons sa solution et ses prédictions, et nous comparons ses prédictions avec les faits observés des covariations internationales des agrégats...

A vast literature analyzes the real effects of price-adjustment costs assuming that quantity adjustments are costless. In this paper, we analyze whether the presence of quantity-adjustments costs, which presumably are significant, change the traditional results on the impact of inflation. In...

We extend the Hansen and Prescott (1991) method for the numerical computation of equilibria of dynamic business cycle models in which there are two sets of agents who play a dynamic Stackelberg game. Such models have application to analysis of issues of optimal government policy in which the...