This paper proposes a simple model that possibly explains the productivity slowdown observed in Japan during the 1990s. Under a forbearance policy by the government toward nonperforming loans, one keeping insolvent firms afloat, other economic agents become exposed to a higher risk of not being...

We investigate whether and how technical cooperation aid (TC) facilitates technological diffusion from developed to developing countries, comparing it with foreign direct investment (FDI) and external openness. Extending the model of Benhabib and Spiegel (2005), we estimate the degree to which...

This paper shows firm level micro analysis of information network use and its impact on firm's productivity. New evidences on economic impacts of IT by type of its application are provided, based on METI's firm level data of Japanese manufacturers and distributors. It is found that productivity...

Recent empirical studies reveal that effectiveness of aid on growth is ambiguous. This paper considers aid proliferation - excess aid investment relative to recurrent cost - as a potential cause that undermines aid effectiveness, because aid projects can only produce sustainable benefits when...

Business cycle accounting rests on the insight that the prototype neoclassical growth model with time-varying wedges can achieve the same allocation generated by a large class of frictional models: equivalence results. Equivalence results are shown under general conditions about the process of...

We consider a new method of public goods provision: monetization. The government makes a particular public good the specie of money and commits itself to buy the public good at a predetermined nominal price and adjust money supply so that the ratio between the public good reserve and money...

We construct a monetary model of financial crises that can explain two characteristic features of the global financial crisis in 2008/2009, namely, the widespread freeze of asset transactions and a sharp contraction in aggregate output. We assume that the assets, such as real estate, work as...

We generalize Lagos and Wright's (2005) framework for a monetary economy in a way that there exist two technologies, "high" and "low," for producing the goods in a decentralized matching market. The high technology is more productive than the low technology, while the agents who use the high...

This paper constructs a model of financial crises that can explain characteristic features of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, namely, the widespread freezing of asset transactions, the sharp contraction of aggregate output, and a deterioration in the labor wedge. This paper assumes...

We propose a simple model of financial crises, which may be useful for the unified analysis of macro and financial policies implemented during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. A financial crisis is modeled as the disappearance of inside money due to the lemon problem à la Akerlof (1970), in a...