A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

/pdf/education-at-a-glance-m5vl7o68j5.pdf

Education at a Glance

Handbook of the Economics of Finance

We revisit the transmission mechanism from monetary policy to household consumption in a Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model. The model yields empirically realistic distributions of wealth and marginal propensities to consume because of two features: uninsurable income shocks and multiple assets with different degrees of liquidity and different returns. In this environment, the indirect effects of an unexpected cut in interest rates, which operate through a general equilibrium increase in labor demand, far outweigh direct effects such as intertemporal substitution. This finding is in stark contrast to small- and medium-scale Representative Agent New Keynesian (RANK) economies, where the substitution channel drives virtually all of the transmission from interest rates to consumption. Failure of Ricardian equivalence implies that, in HANK models, the fiscal reaction to the monetary expansion is a key determinant of the overall size of the macroeconomic response.

/pdf/monetary-policy-according-to-hank-lrk1230c8a.pdf

Monetary Policy According to HANK

Kuznets (Simon) - Modem Economie Growth.

Credit cycles have been a characteristic of advanced economies for over 100 years On average, a sustained pick-up in the ratio of credit to GDP has been highly correlated with banking crises The boom phases of the cycle are characterised by large deviations in credit from trend A range of mechanisms can generate these effects, each of which has strategic complementarity between banks at its core Macro-prudential policy could curb these credit cycles, both through raising the cost of maintaining risky portfolios and through an expectations channel that operates via banks' perceptions of other banks' actions

http://www3.tcmb.gov.tr/konferanslar/financial_stability/Conference_files/Curbing_the_Credit_Cycle.pdf

Curbing the Credit Cycle

We analyse some practical aspects of implementing adaptive learning in the context of forward-looking linear models. In particular, we focus on how to set initial conditions for three popular algorithms, namely recursive least squares, stochastic gradient and constant gain learning. We propose three ways of initializing, one that uses randomly generated data, a second that is ad-hoc and a third that uses an appropriate distribution. We illustrate, via standard examples, that the behaviour and evolution of macroeconomic variables not only depend on the learning algorithm, but on the initial conditions as well. Furthermore, we provide a computing toolbox for analysing the quantitative properties of dynamic stochastic macroeconomic models under adaptive learning.

Adaptive Learning in Practice

Adaptive learning in practice

We study the extent to which self-referential adaptive learning can explain stylized asset pricing facts in a general equilibrium framework. In particular, we analyze the effects of recursive least squares and constant gain algorithms in a production economy and a Lucas type endowment economy. We find that recursive least squares learning has almost no effects on asset price behaviour, since the algorithm converges relatively fast to rational expectations. On the other hand, constant gain learning may contribute towards explaining the stock price and return volatility as well as the predictability of excess returns in the endowment economy. In the production economy, however, the effects of constant gain learning are mitigated by the persistence induced by capital accumulation. We conclude that, contrary to popular belief, standard self-referential learning cannot fully resolve the asset pricing puzzles observed in the data.

Asset Pricing with Adaptive Learning

https://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/events/papers/070309_t.pdf

Asset pricing with adaptive learning

It is known that in a real business cycle model with constant returns to scale and a balanced budget fiscal policy rule, steady state indeterminacy may arise due to endogenous labour income tax rates. This article shows that when the government finances its expenditures via an endogenous consumption tax instead, a steady state is always saddle-path stable. Consequently, combining income taxes with consumption taxes makes the ranges of indeterminacy shrink, thus reducing the possibility of aggregate instability. From a policy perspective, the results provide an additional argument in favour of consumption taxes in place of capital taxes.

Chryssi Giannitsarou

Papers

Adaptive Learning in Practice

Adaptive learning in practice

Asset Pricing with Adaptive Learning

Asset pricing with adaptive learning

Balanced Budget Rules and Aggregate Instability: The Role of Consumption Taxes*