The extent to which there are aggregate returns to scale at the level of aggregate production has important implications both for the types of shocks generating business cycles and for optimal policy. However, prior attempts to measure the extent of these returns using instrumental variable...

A traditional explanation for why sovereign countries repay debt is that they want to keep a good reputation so they can easily borrow more. This explanation does not hold if a country has access to an adequate means of savings regardless of the country's past actions. With such access, a...

This article analyzes some of the potential effects of increased international financial integration within a simple two-country model. In the model, the article considers a switch in the menu of internationally traded financial securities from bonds to complete contingent claims and examines...

This study shows that in a standard one-sector neoclassical growth model, in which money is introduced with a cash-in-advance constraint, zero nominal interest rates are optimal. Milton Friedman argued in 1969 that zero nominal rates are necessary for efficient resource allocation. This study...

We characterize the values of government debt and the debt's maturity structure under which financial crises brought on by a loss of confidence in the government can arise within a dynamic, stochastic general equilibrium model. We also characterize the optimal policy response of the government...

This paper quantitatively evaluates the hypothesis that deflation can account for much of the Great Depression (1929–33). We examine two popular explanations of the Depression: (1) The “high wage” story, according to which deflation, combined with imperfectly flexible wages, raised real...

This paper develops a simple model of sovereign debt in which defaulting nations are excluded from capital markets and regain access by making partial repayments. This is consistent with the historical evidence that defaulting countries return to international loan markets soon after a...

A traditional explanation for why sovereign governments repay debts is that they want to keep good reputations so they can easily borrow more. Bulow and Rogoff show that this argument is invalid under two conditions: (i) there is a single debt relationship, and (ii) regardless of their past...