Growth and real business cycles in Vietnam and the Asean-5. Does the trend shock matter?

We examine Vietnam’s economy in comparison with its closest trade partners. We show that capital accumulation has been the primary growth engine since the start of its transition to the pro-market economy in 1986 – the Doi Moi. We also show that the cyclical behavior of its macro aggregates is similar to that of its ASEAN-5 peers and other developing countries. We extend the standard small open economy RBC model by considering habit persistence and government consumption, which allows a close match of the moments of the growth variables. At the business cycle frequency, transitory productivity shocks account for approximately one-half of Vietnam’s output variance, while country risk and non-transitory productivity shocks account to close to one-fifth each. Regarding the Solow residual’s volatility, we find that the trend component merely accounts for 12 % of this variance in Vietnam, while in Thailand it is only 6 %. These findings refute the “the cycle is the trend” hypothesis in Aguiar and Gopinath (2007) and align with the hypotheses in García-Cicco et al. (2010) and Rhee (2017), where the stationary component is overwhelmingly dominant. We claim that technological progress and productivity-enhancing measures are fundamental for Vietnam’s economy to sustain high growth.     

DSGE forecasts of the lost recovery

The years following the Great Recession were challenging for forecasters. Unlike other deep downturns, this recession was not followed by a swift recovery, but instead generated a sizable and persistent output gap that was not accompanied by deflation as a traditional Phillips curve relationship would have predicted. Moreover, the zero lower bound and unconventional monetary policy generated an unprecedented policy environment. We document the actual real-time forecasting performance of the New York Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model during this period and explain the results using the pseudo real-time forecasting performance results from a battery of DSGE models. We find the New York Fed DSGE model’s forecasting accuracy to be comparable to that of private forecasters, and notably better for output growth than the median forecasts from the FOMC’s Summary of Economic Projections. The model’s financial frictions were key in obtaining these results, as they implied a slow recovery following the financial crisis.     

The contractionary effects of tax shocks on productivity: An empirical and theoretical analysis

I analyze the effects of tax policy changes on US Total Factor Productivity. VAR estimates show that permanent and exogenous tax increases have strong, permanent, and negative effects on TFP which represent about 80% of change in output following the tax increase. I then build a DSGE model which has learning-by-doing and endogenous TFP evolution. The benchmark model is able to replicate the empirical impulse responses. However, when I calibrate the model as in the literature, the effect of taxes on TFP is substantially less elastic than in the data. I argue that this divergence may arise because tax changes labeled as exogenous can give spurious results or because of a mis-specified model.     

Growth uncertainty,generalized disappointment aversion and production-based asset pricing

We study a production economy with regime switching in the conditional mean and volatility of productivity growth. The representative agent has generalized disappointment aversion (GDA) preferences. We show that volatility risk in productivity growth carries a positive and sizable risk premium in levered equity. Our model can endogenously generate long-run risks in the volatility of consumption growth observed in the data. We show that introducing leverage with a procyclical dividend process consistent with the data is critical for the GDA preferences to have a large impact on equity returns.     

What caused Japan’s Great Stagnation in the 1990s? Evidence from an estimated DSGE model

Despite the widespread belief that Japan’s “Great Stagnation” in the 1990s is due to the financial dysfunction after the collapse of asset price bubbles, Hayashi and Prescott (2002) argue that its main cause is a slowdown in total factor productivity growth, using a calibrated neoclassical growth model. The present paper aims to fill this gap by estimating a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model augmented with a financial accelerator mechanism and associated financial shocks. Our estimation results show that even in the presence of the financial shocks an adverse neutral technology shock mainly induced the Great Stagnation and that the rate of neutral technological change is strongly correlated with all enterprises’ financial position in the Tankan. Based on these findings, the paper argues that the Great Stagnation was caused by an adverse neutral technology shock that is likely to represent a tightening of firms’ financing, which induced reduction of R&D investment and misallocation of resources as indicated in previous literature.     

How important is fiscal policy cooperation in a currency union?

By constructing a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which assumes a currency union consisting of two countries with nontradables, we study the importance of fiscal policy cooperation. As shown in the previous studies, we find that the role of fiscal policy is important in maximizing social welfare. However, we have a contrary result for fiscal policy cooperation. While the previous studies highlight that fiscal policy cooperation has a nontrivial effect in maximizing social welfare, we show that fiscal policy cooperation has no benefits, regardless of the share of nontradables. Self-oriented fiscal policy can replicate social welfare under the cooperative setting.     

The effects of public spending externalities

We conduct a positive analysis on the effects of ‘externalities’ produced by government spending. To this effect, we estimate, using U.S. data, an RBC model with two salient features. First, we allow government consumption to directly affect the marginal utility of consumption. Second, we allow public capital to shift the productivity of private factors. We provide an identification analysis that supports the strategy adopted for estimating the parameters governing these two channels. On one hand, private and government consumption are robustly estimated to be substitute goods. Because of substitutability, labor supply reacts little to a government consumption shock, so the estimated output multiplier is much lower than in models with separabilities. On the other hand, our results point towards public investment being ‘unproductive’.     

Size,trend, and policy implications of the underground economy

We study the underground economy within a dynamic and stochastic general equilibrium framework. Our model combines limited tax enforcement with an otherwise standard two-sector neoclassical stochastic growth model. The Bayesian estimation of the model based on Italian data provides evidence in favor of an important underground sector in Italy, with a size that has increased steadily over the whole sample period. We show that this pattern is due to a steady increase in taxation. Fiscal policy experiments suggest that a moderate tax cut, along with a stronger effort in the monitoring process, causes a sizeable reduction in the size of the underground economy and provides a positive stimulus for the regular economy. Both of these effects jointly increase total fiscal revenues.     

Taking financial frictions to the data

We estimate a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with various financial frictions and analyze how well the model explains the Great Recession. Predictive analysis shows that the model can only slightly better explain the large deviation from trend during the crisis relative to a model without financial frictions. Specifically, the risk premium shock, which is a shock to the external finance premium of the entrepreneurs׳ leverage, explains the largest part of the investment downfall during the crisis. However, the ‘balance sheet’ channel of financial frictions in the model, which structurally links balance sheet conditions of financial intermediaries and nonfinancial borrowers to their borrowing rates, is estimated to be weak. We examine alternative prior specifications for how the financial frictions enter the model and continue to find a limited role for these frictions. Rolling-window estimation provides evidence for substantial time variation in parameters governing financial frictions. We conclude that the well-known financial frictions studied in this paper are not able to explain the financial crisis in a linearized and estimated model.     

通胀—增长权衡和中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化

近年来发达经济体出现了菲利普斯曲线平坦化现象,但有关中国的研究尚缺乏共识。本文基于实证和理论分析,系统研究了中国菲利普斯曲线的平坦化问题。首先,结合货币政策冲击和月度SVAR框架,发现通胀的响应程度在2010年后大幅下降。由于证据显示总需求曲线并未平坦化,因此通胀响应弱化可解读为菲利普斯曲线的平坦化。数据显示,菲利普斯曲线平坦化与生产率增长放缓同时发生,因此,本文在标准DSGE模型中引入纵向内生增长渠道,该渠道基于研发投入和知识资本积累,从而使生产率内生于经济周期。研究发现：(1)内生增长渠道放大了需求冲击对产出的影响,但缩小了需求冲击对通胀的影响;(2)内生增长渠道改变通胀和增长之间的替代关系,但不改变边际成本向通胀的传导。分段估计显示,2010年后,通胀和增长的关系弱化是边际成本传导变弱和内生增长渠道变强共同作用的结果。本文认为,由于菲利普斯曲线的平坦化,中央银行应继续坚持稳增长和就业优先战略,关注但不必过于担心由此引发的通胀压力。