After exploring both the crucial role of the interest elasticity of the saving rate in the analysis of a wide variety of issues in economic - particularly tax - policy and reasons why previous studies of the effect of interest rates on consumption and saving have biased the estimated elasticity toward zero, this study presents new estimates of consumption functions based on aggregate U.S. time series data. The results are striking: a variety of functional forms, estimation methods and definitions of the real after-tax rate of return invariably lead to the conclusion of a substantial interest elasticity of saving.

Taxation, Saving, and the Rate of Interest

Can It Happen Again

This thesis contains five essays on economic growth and business cycles. The main focus is on the interaction between economic growth and the cycle: is cyclical variability good or bad for the long-run rate of economic growth? The introduction aims to provide some empirical evidence for an investment-driven growth experience in a group of OECD countries over the post-war period, and examines some salient business cycle facts. The second chapter analyses the macroeconomic effects of demographic transitions like the baby-boom/baby-bust and the expected ageing process. Chapter three explores the effect of business cycle fluctuations on the optimal accumulation of human capital and economic growth. The model predicts a strong positive interaction between economic growth and the cycle, since people spend more time on learning as a way to insure themselves against future income losses. The fourth essay deals with the effect of learning-by-doing on creative destruction and entrenchment within a neo-Schumpeterian framework. Also here we find a positive relationship between economic growth and cyclical variability. The last chapter investigates the effect of government policy on economic growth and business cycle fluctuations, in the presence of random income taxation.

Economic growth and business cycles

This paper studies the sustainability of fiscal policy for selected Furo-area countries. We focus on those countries that either have a high debt to GDP ratio (Italy) or have recently violated the Maastricht treaty by permitting more than three percent of the deficit to GDP ratio (France, Germany, and Portugal). We apply an approach developed by Bohn who proposes to study whether the primary surplus to GDP ratio is a positive function of the debt to GDP ratio which does not need arbitrary discount rates that other approaches have to assume. By controlling for the impact of other variables in this process, we can show that for the above mentioned countries fiscal policy shows evidence for sustainability, although the three percent rule of the Maastricht treaty might temporarily be violated. We also compare our results from the Euro-area countries to results obtained for the US fiscal policy.

Debt sustainability in the European Monetary Union: Theory and empirical evidence for selected countries

After the financial market meltdown of the years 2007–2008 the Obama administration responded with large fiscal stimulus package, yet the reaction to this stimulus has been diverse. Some predicted a multiplier effect in the order of 1.5, others argued that the multiplier will be less than 0.5. Such multiplier estimates typically stem from estimated linear vector autoregressions (VARs) or linearized versions of DSGE models. In this paper, we argue that neither conventional VAR analysis nor linearized DGSE models may be appropriate to evaluate demand effects arising from such a stimulus package. The reason is, as recent research suggests, that the timing of demand shocks matters. To assess the multiplier's variability, we adopt a regime-dependent VAR approach. As is shown in detail, our model specification is grounded on theoretical considerations. The empirical analysis presented here suggests that a regime-dependent VAR-specification is favored for U.S. output and employment data, and that the standard (one-regime) VAR methodology is inappropriate for analyzing multi-regime processes. Although we employ a nonlinear VAR framework, the chosen setup allows the use of largely familiar macroeconometric modeling tools. Estimating a two-regime VAR, we show that the fiscal multiplier varies with the state of the business cycle and the particular specifics of the measure taken. For the U.S. we find, for example, the fiscal expansion multiplier is much higher in a regime of a low economic activity than in a regime of high activity. As we also show it is size dependent.

https://www.cequra.uni-muenchen.de/download/cequra_wp_05.pdf

Regime dependence of the fiscal multiplier

In economics, the emergence of New Growth Theory in recent decades has directed attention to an old and important problem: what are the forces of economic growth and how can public policy enhance them? This book examines major forces of growth--including spillover effects and externalities, education and formation of human capital, knowledge creation through deliberate research efforts, and public infrastructure investment Unique in emphasizing the importance of different forces for particular stages of development, it offers wide-ranging policy implications in the process The authors critically examine recently developed endogenous growth models, study the dynamic implications of modified models, and test the models empirically with modern time series methods that avoid the perils of heterogeneity in cross-country studies Their empirical analyses, undertaken with newly constructed time series data for the United States and some core countries of the Euro zone, show that models containing scale effects, such as the R&D model and the human capital model, are compatible with time series evidence only after considerable modifications and nonlinearities are introduced They also explore the relationship between growth and inequality, with particular focus on technological change and income disparity The Forces of Economic Growth represents a comprehensive and up-to-date empirical time series perspective on the New Growth Theory

The Forces of Economic Growth: A Time Series Perspective

The Uzawa–Lucas model without scale effects: theory and empirical evidence

By contrasting endogenous growth models with facts, one is frequently confronted with the prediction that levels of economic variables, such as R&D expenditures, imply lasting effects on the growth rate of an economy. As stylized facts show, the research intensity in most advanced countries has dramatically increased, mostly more than the GDP. Yet, the growth rates have roughly remained constant or even declined. In this paper we modify the Romer endogenous growth model and test our variant of the model using time series data. We estimate the market version both for the US and Germany for the time period January 1962 to April 1996. Our results demonstrate that the model is compatible with the time series for aggregate data in those countries. All parameters fall into a reasonable range.

Endogenous Growth: Estimating the Romer Model for the US and Germany

This is a book on stochastic dynamic macroeconomics from a Keynesian perpective. It shows that including Keynesian features in intertemporal models considerably contributes to resolve major puzzles arising in the context of the Dynamic General Equilibrium (DGE) model. It also demonstrates that including microeconomic intertemporal behavior of economic agents in macroeconomics is not inconsistent with Keynesian economics. Whereas the first two parts of the book are technically and empirically oriented by elaborating on solution and estimation methods to bring dynamic macroeconomic theory closer to the time series data, the part three of the book uses those tools and addresses major issues in contemporary dynamic macroeconomics. In pursuing those issues the book stresses-as in the New Keynesian literature-nominal and real rigidities. Yet, beyond the latter type of literature-and in contrast to the DGE model -the here presented modeling approach admits open ended dynamics and multiple equilibria, more realistic asset market features, nonclearing labor market, and explores the role of both demand and technology shocks on employment. Central for those results is a new methodological idea pertaining to adaptive optimization where agents can reoptimize once they have perceived and learned about market constraints. Overall, the book is self-contained by including the appropriate solution and estimation methods which brings the theory closer to the time series data. It contains a modern treatment of dynamic macroeconomics for first and second year graduate students.

Stochastic Dynamic Macroeconomics: Theory and Empirical Evidence

In the framework of a Keynesian monetary macro model we study implications of kinked Phillips curves and alternative monetary policy rules. As alternative monetary policy rules we consider monetary growth targeting and interest rate targeting (the Taylor rule). Our monetary macro model exhibits: asset market clearing, disequilibrium in product and labor markets, sluggish price and quantity adjustments, two Phillips Curves for wage and price dynamics, and a combination of medium-run adaptive and short-run forward looking expectations. Simulations of the model with our estimated parameters reveal global instability of its steady state. We show that monetary policy can stabilize the dynamics to some extent and that, in addition, an institutionally given kink in the money wage Phillips-Curve (downwardly rigid wages) represents a powerful mechanism for getting bounded, more or less irregular fluctuations in the place of purely explosive ones. The resulting fluctuations can be reduced in their size by choosing the parameters of monetary policy within a certain corridor, the exact position of which may however be very uncertain.

Gang Gong

Papers

The Forces of Economic Growth: A Time Series Perspective

The Uzawa–Lucas model without scale effects: theory and empirical evidence

Endogenous Growth: Estimating the Romer Model for the US and Germany

Stochastic Dynamic Macroeconomics: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Nonlinear Phillips curves, complex dynamics and monetary policy in a Keynesian macro model