Since the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported much more rapid growth in the number of U.S. private sector employer establishments than the Census Bureau. We document two main reasons for this divergence using a unique dataset that links the establishment frames maintained by each statistical agency. First, there are a large and growing number of employers related to services for the elderly and those with disabilities that are in scope for the BLS establishment frame but not for that of the Census Bureau. Second, many (mostly small-or medium-size) firms report more establishments to BLS than are present in the Census Bureau establishment frame. These phenomena lead to differences in the establishment size distribution, as well as in the number of establishments that firms operate.

We examine how medium-term movements in real exchange rates and GDP vary with international financial conditions. For this purpose, we study the international transmission of productivity shocks across a variety of IRBC models that incorporate different assumptions about the persistence of productivity shocks, the degree of international risk sharing and access to international asset markets. Using a new global solution method, we demonstrate that the transmission of productivity shocks depends critically on the proximity of a national economy to its international borrowing limit. We then show that this implication of the IRBC model is consistent with the behavior of the US-UK real exchange rate and GDP over the past 200 years. The model also produces a negative correlation between relative consumption growth and real depreciation rate consistent with more recent data, and hence offers a resolution of the Backus-Smith puzzle.

We examine the dynamic connections between local wealth inequality and the local politics of property rights. A jurisdiction comprises a politically dominant in-group and a marginalized out-group. At each date, the jurisdiction exploits weaknesses in due process rights under the legal system to redistribute property claims away from the out-group and toward the in-group. It combines takings and zoning with the leveraging of public assets to deter legal challenges. This leverage varies over time and depends on status quo effects and asymmetries in legal treatment of assets. The results show how local politics and policies are linked to wealth disparities. (JEL D31, D72, H13, H77, K11, P14, R52)

We study a dynamic model of property appropriation in autocracies. To maintain the appearance of the rule of law, an autocrat reassigns property only when the reassignment is acceptable to all affected citizens. Nevertheless, the autocrat can appropriate public and private property by exploiting enforcement gaps. After an adjustment period, wealth shares of public property and the private property of out-groups decline. The model rationalizes the connection between wealth inequality and privatization in many autocracies. Calibrating to Russian and Chinese data, simulations to mid-twenty-first century display widening wealth gaps between elites and the populace. Anocracies mitigate this outcome. (JEL D31, D72, K11, L33, O17, P26, P36)

This paper examines the dynamic connections between local wealth inequality and the local politics of property rights within a federal system. We model a jurisdiction comprising a politically dominant in-group and a marginalized out-group. At each date, the jurisdiction tries to redistribute claims on productive assets. The out-group can legally challenge any changes to the status quo by appealing to its due process rights of possession (ROP). Nevertheless, the jurisdiction exploits weaknesses in the legal system to systematically redistribute property claims away from the out-group and toward the in-group. It combines takings and zoning restrictions with the leveraging of public assets to deter legal challenges. We examine how this leverage varies across time and depends on status quo effects and legal prioritization of certain assets. Our results provide a localized political economy explanation for systemic wealth disparities in the U.S.

We introduce our GDSGE framework and a novel global solution method, called simultaneous transition and policy function iterations (STPFIs), for solving dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. The framework encompasses many well-known incomplete markets models with highly nonlinear dynamics such as models of financial crises and models with rare disasters including the current COVID-19 pandemic. Using consistency equations, our method is most effective at solving models featuring endogenous state variables with implicit laws of motion such as wealth or consumption shares. Finally, we incorporate this method in an automated and publicly available toolbox that solves many important models in the aforementioned topics, and in many cases, more efficiently and/or accurately than their original algorithms.

A nonlinear New Keynesian (NK) model with more severe downward rigidity in prices has a number of interesting implications. The “standard” NK equilibrium– with the nominal anchor during ELB episodes set by expectations about future monetary policy – exists even for long- lasting ELB episodes. The implied Phillips curve flattens endogenously as the inflation rate falls. This makes it easy to match data from episodes with large negative output gaps and only mild deflation; it can also generate a sharper rise in inflation in response to adverse-supply shocks. The implied fiscal multipliers at the ELB don’t get much larger than unity.

With the increase of public environmental awareness and the growth of e-commerce, sustainable development promotes the manufacturer to increasingly participate in green innovation and make full use of the online sales channel to enhance competitiveness. Despite decentralized encroachment being widely adopted in business reality, the current literature has commonly paid more attention to centralized encroachment. To complement related research, a dual-channel green supply chain composed of a manufacturer (its retail subsidiary) and a retailer is investigated. We focus on what encroachment strategy (centralization vs. decentralization) drives the green innovation and analyze the impact of consumer green awareness and product substitutability on the manufacturer’s encroachment strategy, green innovation efforts and supply chain performance. Under each encroachment strategy, we build a Stackelberg game model and derive the equilibrium outcome. Then, we theoretically analyze the effects of consumer green awareness and product substitutability on green innovation and each party’s profitability. Our comparative analysis shows what encroachment strategy drives green innovation and what encroachment strategy benefits both parties and social welfare. Numerical studies are also conducted to support the analytical results. Our key findings reveal that decentralization improves the green innovation and achieves a both-win situation for the manufacturer and the retailer. Besides that, decentralization can reduce the environmental damage and increase social welfare as well.

How can low consumer spending cause an inefficient recession or recovery? We propose a real theory of aggregate demand shortages that does not rely on nominal rigidities. In our theory, an economy can be demand constrained when, i) productivity in the consumption goods sector can be improved or maintained via investment, and ii) external financing of this investment is subject to a tight enough borrowing constraint. In a demand-constrained equilibrium, a savings tax increases consumption, investment in productivity, and welfare and may also increase investment in capital goods and output. We use an extension of our benchmark model to show how financial shocks can create a demand-constrained recession. Our theory suggests that fiscal rather than monetary policy might become the primary policy tool to restore the efficiency under certain conditions. Demand management policies might be necessary over a long period of time. The "potential", i.e., the constrained efficient allocation, may depend on both supply and demand factors.

It is well known that innovation-driven emerging industries have gradually become the main driving force of global economic recovery and growth. Technological innovation decision-making is a complex and dynamic system, which is affected by various factors inside and outside an enterprise. In this dynamic system, how to make the optimal technological innovation investment decisions is a key concern for enterprises and governments. As an investment activity, technological innovation largely depends on the amount of external financing obtained by enterprises. However, financial constraints have increasingly become an obstacle to enterprises' technological innovation. At the same time, technological innovation is also affected by the external political and economic environment, such as changes in economic policy, government subsidy policies, and institutional environmental policies. Can these external environments reduce the negative impact of financing constraints on technological innovation? In this study, based on the data of listed companies in China's strategic emerging industries, we adopt a panel negative binomial regression model to investigate the complexity of technological innovation decision-making from the perspective of financing constraints. Our main findings include the following. First, financing constraints significantly inhibit the input and output of technological innovation in emerging industries. Second, the inhibition effect on the output of substantive innovations is more pronounced than that on the output of strategic innovations. Third, based on the analysis of enterprise heterogeneity in different dimensions, we show that this inhibition has a selective effect among different industries. Finally, we show that economic policy and marketization can help alleviate the inhibition effect of financing constraints on technological innovation.

We examine the role of collateral in a dynamic model of optimal credit contracts in which a borrower values both housing and nonhousing consumption. The borrower’s private information about his income is the only friction. An optimal contract is collateralized when in some state, some portion of the borrower’s net worth is forfeited to the lender. We show that optimal contracts are always collateralized. The total value of forfeited assets is decreasing in income, highlighting the role of collateral as a deterrent to manipulation. Some assets—those that generate consumable services—will necessarily be collateralized, while others may not be. Endogenous default arises when the borrower’s initial wealth is low, as with subprime borrowers, and/or his future earnings are highly variable. (JEL D82, D86, G21, G51)

In this paper, we build a nonlinear two-sector DSGE model with capital accumulation, in which the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) of interest rate and the collateral constraint are occasionally binding. We show the interaction of ZLB and the deleveraging cycle triggered by a binding collateral constraint can be a powerful mechanism in exacerbating the financial crisis as well as generating the prolonged liquidity trap and stagnation after the crisis. In particular, a binding ZLB can be triggered by capital over-accumulation, and when ZLB is binding, output is decreasing in capital stock. We also find an equilibrium does not exist when the capital stock is too high, while the existence of equilibrium can be restored by adding the adjustment cost of capital into the model. In our numerical results, we find the amplification effect of the collateral constraint is modest when the ZLB is not binding, but is quantitatively large when the ZLB is binding. In addition, with collateral constraint and ZLB, the recovery of the economy is slow since it takes longer for the borrowers to restore their net worth, and due to insufficient demand, the duration of the liquidity trap is longer. Lastly, in a society with better access to the credit market, the borrowers use higher leverage ex ante, and the average duration of ZLB is longer once the economy is hit by adverse shocks.

We study the effects of the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the severity of financial crises using an incomplete markets New Keynesian model with two occasionally binding constraints: a ZLB on the nominal interest rate and a borrowing constraint tied to an asset price. The model's financial wedge corresponds to an endogenous multiplier on the borrowing constraint. Binding ZLB exacerbates financial crises through its interaction with the asset fire sale vicious cycle, driving up the financial wedge. Our results offer a novel reinterpretation of the negligible effect of the ZLB in representative agent New Keynesian models with exogenous wedges. (JEL E12, E31, E32, E43, E52, G01)

We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher than the market rate of return, i.e., they receive a quasi-rent on invested capital. This rent is priced into the value of the firm, so Tobin's q is driven by two forces: changes in the value of invested capital, and changes in the value of the insiders' future rents per unit of capital. This weakens the correlation between q and investment, relative to the frictionless benchmark. We present a calibrated version of the model, which, due to this effect, generates realistic correlations between investment, q, and cash flow.

This paper analyzes the distribution and growth of firm-level employment along two margins: the extensive margin (the number of establishments in a firm) and the intensive margin (the number of workers per establishment in a firm). We utilize administrative datasets to document the behavior of these two margins in relation to changes in the U.S. firm-size distribution. In the cross section, we find the firm-size distribution, as well as both extensive and intensive margins, exhibits a fat tail. The increase in average firm size between 1990 and 2014 is primarily driven by an expansion along the extensive margin, particularly in very large firms. We develop a tractable general-equilibrium growth model with two types of innovations: external and internal. External innovation leads to the extensive margin of firm growth, and internal innovation leads to intensive-margin growth. The model generates fat-tailed distributions in firm size, establishment size, and the number of establishments per firm. We estimate the model to uncover the fundamental forces that caused the distributional changes from 1995 to 2014. The largest contributors to the increase in the number of establishments per firm are the external innovation cost and the decline in establishment exit rate. Classification-JEL E24, J21, L11, O31

This paper uses the tools developed in the literature on dynamically incomplete markets with finite agents to study the large economy with a continuum of agents and both aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks in Krusell and Smith (1998). It establishes the existence of sequential competitive equilibrium, generalized recursive equilibrium, recursive equilibrium with an extended-state space, and characterizes several important properties of the equilibrium variables. The equilibrium process admits an ergodic measure, which enables the application of the ergodic theorem for simulating and calibrating the model. Without aggregate shocks, the existence and some characterization results carry over to economies with only idiosyncratic shocks such as Huggett (1997)'s economy. However, the existence of recursive equilibrium with the natural minimal state space in Krusell and Smith's economy remains elusive, as in finite-agent incomplete markets economies.

How important is the effect of the interest rate Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on the severity of the U.S. Great Recession? We tackle this question using an incomplete markets New Keynesian model, with a ZLB on the nominal interest rate and a borrowing constraint tied to asset price. We solve the model with recurrent aggregate shocks and the two occasionally binding constraints using a global method. The financial wedge, which is commonly assumed to be exogenous in the existing literature, corresponds to an endogenous multiplier on the borrowing constraint and is partly driven by the binding ZLB. The binding ZLB exacerbates the financial crisis through its interaction with the Fisherian asset price deflation and asset fire-sale vicious cycles, tightening the borrowing constraint and leading to a significant increase in the financial wedge. Our results offer a novel reinterpretation of the negligible effect of ZLB in the representative agent New Keynesian models with exogenous financial wedges. JEL: C60, E20, E30, E40, E50, G11

Under limited commitment that prevents agents from pledging their future non-financial wealth, agents with incorrect beliefs always survive by holding on to their non-financial wealth. Friedman (1953)’s market selection hypothesis suggests that their financial wealth trends towards zero in the long run. However, in this paper, we present a dynamic general equilibrium model with incomplete markets due to collateral constraints and show that the hypothesis depends on the degree of market incompleteness. When markets are more incomplete, over-optimistic agents not only survive but also prosper by speculation. But they end up with low long run financial wealth when markets are more complete. In this model, stricter margin requirements protect the wealth of the optimists and thereby increase asset price volatility. The numerical method developed in this paper can be used for many other heterogeneous agent models with recursive utility functions, incomplete markets, portfolio constraints, and in the presence of non-tradable endowments.

Is the standard hyperbolic-discounting model capable of robust qualitative predictions for savings behavior? Despite results suggesting a negative answer, we provide a positive one. We give conditions under which all Markov equilibria display either saving at all wealth levels or dissaving at all wealth levels. Moreover, saving versus dissaving is determined by a simple condition comparing the interest rate to a threshold made up of impatience parameters only. Our robustness results illustrate a well-behaved side of the model and imply that qualitative behavior is determinate, dissipating indeterminacy concerns to the contrary (Krusell and Smith, 2003). We prove by construction that equilibria always exist and that multiplicity is present in some cases, highlighting that our robust predictions are not due to uniqueness. Similar results may be obtainable in related dynamic games, such as political economy models of public spending.

The forward fiscal guidance puzzle pertains to New Keynesian models when monetary policy is temporarily caught in a liquidity trap: (1) expected future fiscal shocks have an unbelievably large effect on current inflation, and (2) the effect on current inflation is larger the further out is the shock expected to occur. We illustrate the problem analytically. Then, we use Blue Chip inflation forecasts to argue that the effects on inflation expectations should be small. And finally, we analyze two potential resolutions to the puzzle. The first is the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. In a calibrated model with price inertia, investment, and long term debt, we show that the Fiscal Theory resolves the second aspect of the puzzle, but certainly not the first. In our preferred resolution we return to a Ricardian fiscal policy. And we assume that the probability of a return to the Taylor Rule depends on the rate of inflation. The model’s predictions are in line with the evidence from the Blue Chip forecasts.