Resuscitating the wage channel in models with unemployment fluctuations

Higher wages all else equal translate into higher inflation. More rigid wages imply a weaker response of inflation to shocks. This view of the wage channel is deeply entrenched in central banks’ views and models of their economies. In this paper, we present a model with equilibrium unemployment which has three distinctive properties. First, using a search and matching model with right-to-manage wage bargaining a proper wage channel obtains. Second, accounting for fixed costs associated with maintaining an existing job greatly magnifies profit fluctuations for any given degree of wage fluctuations, which allows the model to reproduce the fluctuations of unemployment over the business cycle. And third, the model implies a reasonable elasticity of steady state unemployment with respect to changes in benefits. The calibration of the model implies low profits, but does not require a small gap between the value of working and the value of unemployment for the worker.     

A quantitative analysis of inflation as a tax on the underground economy

Inflation rates are more dispersed and are persistently higher in developing countries. This paper quantifies the importance of the public-finance motive for inflation in the presence of a tax-evading sector, the underground economy. The approach is motivated by the observation that the underground economy is especially large in poor countries. The analysis builds on a general equilibrium monetary model with two production sectors, where income in one of the sectors cannot be taxed. A benevolent government finances its budget using an optimal combination of the income tax rate and the inflation rate. The model is first calibrated to the U.S. economy and is then used for a cross-country simulation. The resulting relationships between the size of an underground economy, inflation rate, income tax rate and the share of seigniorage in the government revenue rationalize the cross-country data quantitatively well.     

The retirement wealth of the baby boom generation

The paper compares the well-being of the baby boom generation (ages 40-55) in 2001 with the same age group in 1983. I find little evidence that their relative position deteriorated over the period. By some indicators, this generation has seen an improvement. In terms of income, the 40-55 age group was at about the same relative position in 2001 as in 1983. In terms of conventional wealth, there was some slippage over the period. In terms of mean augmented wealth (net worth plus pension and Social Security wealth), their relative position improved somewhat but in terms of median augmented wealth there was again some slippage.     

Financing constraints, irreversibility, and investment dynamics

We develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints. We use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment, variable capital investment, and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Our model yields three main results. First, the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint. Second, the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint. Finally, the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of US manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical, and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle.     

Nonseparable Preferences, Fiscal Policy Puzzles, and Inferior Goods

Nonseparable preferences over consumption and leisure can generate an increase in private consumption in response to government spending, as found in the data, in a frictionless business cycle model. However, the conditions on preferences required for these result to obtain hold if and only if the consumption good is inferior. Similarly, positive co-movement of consumption and hours worked occurs if and only if either consumption or leisure is inferior.     

Insurance and opportunities: A welfare analysis of labor market risk

Using a model with constant relative risk-aversion preferences, endogenous labor supply and partial insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, this paper provides an analytical characterization of three welfare effects: (a) the welfare effect of a rise in wage dispersion, (b) the welfare gain from completing markets, and (c) the welfare effect from eliminating risk. The analysis reveals an important trade-off for these welfare calculations. On the one hand, higher wage uncertainty increases the cost associated with missing insurance markets. On the other hand, greater wage dispersion presents opportunities to raise aggregate productivity by concentrating market work among more productive workers. Welfare effects can be expressed in terms of the underlying parameters defining preferences and wage risk or, alternatively, in terms of changes in observable second moments of the joint distribution over individual wages, consumption and hours.     

The price and quantity of residential land in the United States

One can conceptualize a house as a bundle comprising a reproducible tangible structure and a non-reproducible plot of land. When the value of a home is decomposed this way, land capitalizes the market value of a home's location. We develop a formal relationship between the dynamics of house prices, structures costs and land prices, and thereby construct the first constant-quality price and quantity indexes for the aggregate stock of residential land in the United States. In a range of applications we show that these series can shed light on trends, fluctuations and regional variation in the price of housing.     

Taxes and the global allocation of capital

Despite enormous growth in international capital flows, capital-output ratios continue to exhibit substantial heterogeneity across countries. We explore the possibility that taxes, particularly corporate taxes, are a significant source of this heterogeneity. The evidence is mixed. Tax rates computed from tax revenue are inversely correlated with capital-output ratios, as we might expect. However, effective tax rates constructed from official tax rates show little relation to capital—or to revenue-based tax measures. The stark difference between these two tax measures remains an open issue.     

Mitigating America's demographic dilemma by pre-funding social security

Financing Social Security benefits at current levels implies significant increases in payroll taxes within the next 20 years under current US demographic developments. Using a general-equilibrium overlapping-generations model with realistic patterns of fertility and lifespan extension, this study shows that future generations would be harmed during the demographic transition due to rising payroll taxes, which crowd out savings and slow real wage growth below the rate of technological progress. A faster rate of technological progress would mitigate only some of the payroll tax increase and its economic consequences but could not overcome them. Addressing the financing problem by reducing Social Security benefits as needed or by raising the eligibility age for benefits imposes major welfare losses on current or near term retirees. By contrast, a pre-funding of Social Security financed with consumption taxes more evenly spreads the welfare losses across generations, and it helps future generations, especially the poor, by stimulating capital formation.     

Do expected future marginal costs drive inflation dynamics?

This article discusses a more general interpretation of the two-step minimum distance estimation procedure proposed in Sbordone (2002). The estimator is again applied to a version of the New Keynesian Phillips curve, where inflation dynamics are driven by the expected evolution of marginal costs. The article clarifies econometric issues, addresses concerns about uncertainty and model misspecification raised in recent studies, and assesses the robustness of previous results. While confirming the importance of forward-looking terms in accounting for inflation dynamics, it suggests how the methodology can be applied to extend the analysis of inflation to a multivariate setting.     

The Phillips curve under state-dependent pricing

We derive a Phillips curve equation from the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with state-dependent pricing developed by Dotsey et al. [1999. State-dependent pricing and the general equilibrium dynamics of money and output. Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, 655-690]. This state-dependent Phillips curve encompasses the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) based on Calvo-type price setting as a special case. We analyze the effect of the state-dependent terms (that is, the variations in the distributions of price vintages) on inflation persistence, and we examine whether the hybrid NKPC (that is, the NKPC extended by a lagged inflation term) can adequately describe inflation dynamics generated in a calibrated state-dependent pricing economy.     

Credit lines as monitored liquidity insurance: Theory and evidence

We propose a theory of credit lines provided by banks to firms as a form of monitored liquidity insurance. Bank monitoring and resulting revocations help control illiquidity-seeking behavior of firms insured by credit lines. The cost of credit lines is thus greater for firms with high liquidity risk, which in turn are likely to use cash instead of credit lines. We test this implication for corporate liquidity management by identifying exogenous shocks to liquidity risk of firms in corporate bond and equity markets. Firms experiencing increases in liquidity risk move out of credit lines and into cash holdings.     

Evaluating the economic significance of downward nominal wage rigidity

The existence of downward nominal wage rigidity has been abundantly documented, but what are its economic implications? This paper demonstrates that, even when wages are allocative, downward wage rigidity can be consistent with weak macroeconomic effects. Firms have an incentive to compress wage increases as well as wage cuts when downward wage rigidity binds. By neglecting compression of wage increases, previous literature may have overstated the costs of downward wage rigidity to firms. Using micro-data from the US and Great Britain, I find that the evidence for the compression of wage increases when downward wage rigidity binds. Accounting for this reduces the estimated increase in aggregate wage growth due to wage rigidity to be much closer to zero. These results suggest that downward wage rigidity may not provide a strong argument against the targeting of low inflation rates.     

New measures of the output gap based on the forward-looking new Keynesian Phillips curve

Forward-looking versions of the New Keynesian Phillips curve imply that the output gap, the deviation of the actual output from its natural level due to nominal rigidities, drives the dynamics of inflation relative to expected inflation. We exploit this to set up a bivariate unobserved component model for extracting new estimates of the output gap in the US. The gap estimates are large and persistent even after allowing for correlated trend and cycle shock. We then augment our model to use the information in the unemployment rate. The estimates confirm the presence of a large and persistent cyclical component.     

Monetary policy, taxes, and the business cycle

This paper analyzes the interaction of inflation with the tax code and its contribution to aggregate fluctuations. We find significant effects operating through the tax on realized nominal capital gains. A tax on nominal bond income magnifies these effects. Our innovation is to combine monetary policy shocks with non-indexed taxes in a model where the central bank implements policy using an interest rate rule. Monetary policy had important effects on the behavior of the business cycle before 1980 because policymakers did not exert effective control over inflation. Monetary policy reform around 1980 led to better control, and with more stable inflation, the effect of the interaction between monetary policy and the nominal capital gains tax has become negligible.     

Corporate tax,capital structure,and the accessibility of bank loans: Evidence from China

In this paper, we investigate whether listed firms in China adjust their capital structure in response to an increase in the corporate tax rate. Although theories of capital structure suggest that corporate tax is an important determinant of capital structure, how exogenous changes of the tax rate affect firms’ leverage decisions has not been fully explored. We examine a unique circumstance in which the Chinese government increased the corporate tax rate of firms that had previously received local government tax rebates. The evidence indicates that these firms increased their leverage when the corporate tax rate increased. Further investigation suggests that the adjustment of leverage was mostly driven by firms with a high level of access to bank loans.