Suchergebnisse

This article investigates a dynamic general equilibrium model with a stockout constraint, which means that no seller can sell more than the inventories that she has. The model successfully explains two inventory facts; (i) inventory investment is procyclical, and (ii) production is more volatile than sales. The key intuition is that, since inventories and demand are complements in generating sales, the optimal level of inventories is increasing in expected demand. Thus, when demand is expected to be strong, firms increase their production not only to meet their demand but also to accumulate inventories. Also, our model shows that the inventory to sales ratio is persistent and countercyclical, while the (endogenous) markup is countercyclical. These are because a high interest rate in booms discourages firms to hold inventories.

Previous empirical studies assessing sustainability have adopted the weak sustainability indicator (WSI) which measures changes in the stock of physical and natural capital. Whereas these studies have been retrospective, we use a dynamic general equilibrium model to investigate global and regional sustainability over the period 1985–2050, focusing on fossil fuel extraction. Our standard scenario predicts increasing WSI values suggesting global sustainability in all periods to 2050 as, despite a rising world oil price, the introduction of backstop fuels in 2010 provides an alternative source of energy. A more pessimistic scenario examines possible outcomes in the absence of energy saving technological change and backstops fuels. WSI values still indicate global sustainability, though economic growth is only half that predicted by the more optimistic model, and two countries—USA and Brazil—are unsustainable.

This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets for factors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households' funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and tax benefits of corporate debt are equalizing each other, which renders an institutionally based explanation of financial structure. Adjustment of corporate finance adds to the ordinary savings channel of fiscal and monetary policy. Taking real and financial interactions into account, the model predicts a somewhat lower impact of fiscal policy on macroeconomic aggregates as commonly assessed and a much stronger impact of monetary policy. This amplification is caused by the banking sector's translation of borrowing rates into lending rates and vice versa.

This paper considers an overlapping generations model in which capital investment is financed in a credit market with adverse selection. Lenders' inability to commit ex-ante not to bailout ex-post, together with a wealthy position of entrepreneurs gives rise to the soft budget constraint syndrome, i.e. the absence of liquidation of poor performing firms on a regular basis. This problem arises endogenously as a result of the interaction between the economic behavior of agents, without relying on political economy explanations. We found the problem more binding along the business cycle, providing an explanation to creditors leniency during booms in some LatinAmerican countries in the late seventies and early nineties.

Part I: Representative Agent Models: Basic Models -- Perturbation Methods: Framework and Tools -- Perturbation Methods: Solutions -- Perturbation Methods: Model Evaluation and Applications -- Weighted Residuals Methods -- Simulation-Based Methods -- Discrete State Space Value Function Iteration -- Part II: Heterogenous Agent Models: Computation of Stationary Distributions -- Dynamics of the Distribution Function -- Overlapping Generations Models with Perfect Foresight -- OLG Models with Uncertainty -- Part III: Numerical Methods: Linear Algebra -- Function Approximation -- Differentiation and Integration -- Nonlinear Equations and Optimization -- Difference Equations and Stochastic Processes.