And J. A. Scheinkman

Bio: And J. A. Scheinkman is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Bellman equation. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 434 citations.

Recursive Macroeconomic Theory

Abstract: Recursive methods offer a powerful approach in dynamic macroeconomics. This book contains both an introduction to recursive tools, including standard applications such as asset pricing, and advanced material, including analyses of reputational mechanisms and contract design. The tools are presented with enough technical sophistication to get the reader started working on practical problems. When numerical simulations are called for, the book provides suggestions for how to proceed, as well as references for further reading. The applications cover many substantive issues in macroeconomics, such as equilibrium asset prices, market incompleteness, wealth distribution, fiscal-monetary theories of inflation, government debt, optimal labour and capital taxation, time consistency and credible government policies, optimal social insurance, economic growth and labour market dynamics.

Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets

Abstract: The standard envelope theorems apply to choice sets with convex and topological structure, providing sufficient conditions for the value function to be differentiable in a parameter and characterizing its derivative. This paper studies optimization with arbitrary choice sets and shows that the traditional envelope formula holds at any differentiability point of the value function. We also provide conditions for the value function to be, variously, absolutely continuous, left- and right-differentiable, or fully differentiable. These results are applied to mechanism design, convex programming, continuous optimization problems, saddle-point problems, problems with parameterized constraints, and optimal stopping problems.

Housing Investment in the United States

Abstract: A supply-determined model of housing investment is estimated from quarterly data over the 1963-83 period. The model is built on dynamic marginal cost pricing considerations and allows short- and long-run supply elasticities to differ. These are estimated as 1.0 and 3.0, respectively, but most of the long-run response occurs within 1 year. Rapid adjustment speed and the sizable long-run elasticity of supply are important factors in understanding the volatility of housing investment. The data also suggest some anomalies in the expected present value theory of asset pricing for housing capital.

Dynamic Choices of Hyperbolic Consumers

Abstract: Laboratory and field studies of time preference find that discount rates are much greater in the short-run than in the long-run. Hyperbolic discount functions capture this property. This paper solves the decision problem of a hyperbolic consumer who faces stochastic income and a borrowing constraint. The paper uses the bounded variation calculus to derive the Hyperbolic Euler Relation, a natural generalization of the standard Exponential Euler Relation. The Hyperbolic Euler Relation implies that consumers act as if they have endogenous rates of time preference that rise and fall with the future marginal propensity to consume (e.g., discount rates that endogenously range from 5% to 41% for the example discussed in the paper).

Self-Enforcing Wage Contracts

Abstract: We examine long-term wage contracts between a risk-neutral firm and a risk-averse worker when both can costlessly renege and buy or sell labour at a random spot market wage. A self-enforcing contract is one in which neither party ever has an incentive to renege. In the optimum self-enforcing contract, wages are sticky: they are less variable than spot market wages and positively serially correlated. They are updated by a simple rule: around each spot wage is a time invariant interval, and the contract wage changes each period by the smallest amount necessary to bring it into the current interval.