A microfoundation of the Harrod–Okishio investment function

The article presents a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE-model) for the Russian economy. The model describes the behavior of the following macroeconomic agents: households, real sector, banking sector, Central Bank, as well as the interactions between them and the world. Household modeling uses the external habit formation approach to account for the inertia of preferences. To model the real sector, we abandoned the most common approach which assumes that the decision on investments is made by the households as the owners of production factors. Instead, we took the firm-specific capital approach which assumes that the decision on investment is made by the firms themselves. The study also considers that in Russia, fixed assets are mostly invested from the firms' own funds. To account for the investment inertia in the fixed asset in a real sector model, the expenditures are transferred to the commissioning of new facilities, the Calvo model is applied to describe the price setting under the monopolistic competition. A banking sector which defines the loan and debt interest rates to the key Central Bank interest rate is chosen to be a link between the households and firms in the model. The Taylor equation is used to describe the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia under the inflation targeting, while an inertia factor is included into the equation with the uncovered interest parity for the budget rule which regulates the purchases (or sales) of the currency by the National Welfare Fund. The final linearized model is a system of 23 difference equations with rational expectations. Based on the proposed model, calculations were made and key macroeconomic indicators were forecasted for 2020–2021 on a quarterly basis for the Russian economy. The calculations account for the relevant recessionary factors: oil price fall, oil production cut in OPEC+ deals, quarantine measures aimed to prevent the spread of the corona virus infection, anti-recessionary measures of the RF Government. The findings show that the economic downturn in 2020 can be from 5 to 7% under COVID-19 pandemic. Growth in 2021 is estimated to be within 3–5%. The developed model can be used for scenario projecting for the Russian economy, upgrading the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia, and for developing applied quarterly projection models (QPM). The model could be further modified by including more elements: decomposing the household sector into the Ricardian and non-Ricardian ones, identifying the resources industries and industries in the real sector which manufacture the invested goods, including the key taxes and budget expenses into the model. One more promising area is to analyze the equilibrium of the interest rates when large firms could accumulate their own financial resources. This prerequisite decreases the demand for the bank loans from the real sector and, thus, leads to lower, including the negative, interest rates. The proposed approach enhances the quality of a DSGE model as a predictive tool for making the political and managerial decisions.

Purpose This paper aims to estimate a New Keynesian small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for Egypt using Bayesian techniques and data for the period FY2004/2005:Q1-FY2015/2016:Q4 to assess monetary and fiscal policy interactions and their impact on economic stabilization. Outcomes of monetary and fiscal authority commitment to policy instruments, interest rate, government spending and taxes, are evaluated using Taylor-type and optimal simple rules. Design/methodology/approach The study extends the stylized micro-founded small open economy New Keynesian DSGE model, proposed by Lubik and Schorfheide (2007), by explicitly introducing fiscal policy behavior into the model (Fragetta and Kirsanova, 2010 and Çebi, 2011). The model is calibrated using quarterly data for Egypt on key macroeconomic variables during FY2004/2005:Q1-FY2015/2016:Q4; and Bayesian methods are used in estimation. Findings The results show that monetary and fiscal policy instruments in Egypt contribute to economic stability through their effects on inflation, output and debt stock. The monetary policy Taylor rule estimates reveal that the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) attaches significant importance to anti-inflationary policy and (to a lesser extent) to output targeting but responds weakly to nominal exchange rate variations. CBE decisions are significantly influenced by interest rate smoothing. Egyptian fiscal policy has an important role in output and government debt stabilization. Additionally, the fiscal authority chooses pro-cyclical government spending and counter-cyclical tax policies for output stabilization. Again, past values of the fiscal instruments are influential in the evolution of the future fiscal policy-making process. Originality/value A few studies have examined the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy in Egypt within a unified framework. The presented paper integrates the monetary and fiscal policy analysis within a unified dynamic general equilibrium open economy rational expectations framework. Without such a framework, it would not be easy to jointly analyze monetary and fiscal transmission mechanisms for output, inflation and debt. Also, it would be neither possible to contrast the outcome of monetary and fiscal authorities commitment to a simple Taylor instrument rule vis-à-vis optimal policy outcomes nor to assess the behavior of monetary and fiscal agents in macroeconomic stability in context of an active/passive policy decisions framework.

Nowadays DSGE models are the mainstream of macroeconomic theory. DSGE stands for dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium and the main purpose of these models is to perform the analysis of business cycle fluctuations and economic policy. The main advantage of DSGE models is related to their theoretical foundations – the dynamics of economic processes is described as interaction of rational optimizing agents, which react to "exogenous stochastic disturbances" (shocks). These advantage of DSGE models helps to analyse both economic processes on the aggregated level and individual markets under the circumstances of uncertainty. Historically, DSGE models have gone through several stages of development. The origins of DSGE models are related to Lucas critique – a series of papers, which presented a new approach of macroeconomic processes analysis. This approach was rather controversial with Keynesian theory. In the terms of R. Lucas, macroeconomic models must be based on microfoundations and consider expected variables, because the consideration of expectations in macroeconomic models best describes "the real economic situation" and makes these models suitable for economic policy development and analysis. The first DSGE models were basically RBC (Real Business Cycle) models, but their main drawback was assumption of neutrality of money, which made them not suitable for monetary policy analysis. Later DSGE models correct this drawback – contemporary DSGE models are used for various purposes, for instance, fiscal and monetary policy analysis. Keywords: macroeconomic modelling, DSGE, Latvian economy

This article discusses the evolution of dynamic macroeconomic models from calibrated Real Business Cycle models to estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. The purpose is to suggest the usefulness of these models as a tool for policy analysis, with a particular emphasis on aspects of monetary policy. (JEL classification: D58, E50) This article gives an overview of the literature that has led to the emergence of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. This approach to macroeconomic modelling has gained widespread support among researchers and has recently started to be taken seriously by policy-making institutions as a modelling framework which is useful for policy analysis and the conceptual support of decision making. Modern macroeconomics is the result of an intense, and at times passionate, scientific debate that has taken place over the last decades. In the early 1980s, a new approach to the business cycle analysis was introduced by Kydland and Prescott (1982). The main tenet of their approach was that a small model of a frictionless and perfectly competitive market economy, inhabited by utility-maximising rational agents which operate subject to budget constraints and technological restrictions, could replicate a number of stylised business cycle facts when hit by random productivity shocks. This so-called real business cycle (RBC) approach to macroeconomic modelling was early on criticised on various aspects. Nevertheless, as it is now widely acknowledged, the RBC agenda has made a lasting methodological contribution. Most of today’s DSGE models

<p>This thesis consists of an introduction and three substantive chapters. Chapter 2 explores the identification of a small open economy model. Chapter 3 focuses on the business cycle consequences of migration. And chapter 4 investigates the contribution of investment-specific technology shocks to business cycle fluctuations in the presence of financial frictions. Chapter 2 takes a conventional new open economy macro model for a small open economy and addresses three questions: what data series should be used to identify the parameters of such a model? Are foreign data important for the identification of domestic parameters? And lastly, which structural parameters are interdependent? The chapter illustrates an applied methodology that enables an investigator to understand which data series are informative about parameters. The methodology can also be used to learn about the properties of the model. In particular, the methodology highlights which parameters are connected to which data series. Identification of business cycle models matters because our ability to recover structural parameters is influenced by the data series that are used to inform the estimation. Structural parameters determine both the specification of household preferences and the constraints that affect business cycle volatility, which together determine welfare. Consequently, identification analysis can provide insights into household welfare, which in turn has ramifications for the specification of monetary policy rules. If parameters are identified then the likelihood will eventually outweigh any prior beliefs as the sample size becomes large (Gelman et al., 2004, p. 107). The approach discussed here thus shows whether data will eventually dominate prior beliefs about parameters, determining whether analysis can – in the limit – resolve conflicting prior beliefs, and therefore usefully inform the design of policy rules. Chapter 3 of this thesis examines the business cycle effects that arise from an expansion of the population due to migration. In recent years, migration flows have become a highly politicised topic, both in New Zealand and abroad. While the debate on migration has become heated, comparatively little is known about the business cycle consequences of migration flows. This chapter contributes to the macroeconomic literature by illustrating the contribution that migration shocks make to cyclical fluctuations in New Zealand, and illustrates their dynamic impact. Using an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy and a structural vector autoregression, the chapter shows that migration shocks account for a considerable portion of the variability of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). While migration shocks matter for the capital investment and consumption components of per capita GDP, other shocks are more important drivers of cyclical fluctuations in these aggregates. Migration shocks also make some contribution to residential investment and real house prices, but other shocks play a more substantial role in driving housing market volatility. In the DSGE model, the level of human capital possessed by migrants relative to that of locals materially affects the business cycle impact of migration. The impact of migration shocks is larger when migrants have substantially different – larger or smaller – levels of human capital relative to locals. When the average migrant has higher levels of human capital than locals, as seems to be common for migrants into most OECD¹ economies, a migration shock has an expansionary effect on per capita GDP and its components, which also accords with the evidence from a structural vector autoregression. Chapter 4 of this thesis investigates the contribution of investment-specific technology (IST) shocks in driving cyclical fluctuations in a closed economy model when a borrowing constraint is introduced à la Kiyotaki and Moore (1997). IST shocks have been identified as a major driver of the business cycle, eg see Greenwood et al. (2000), and Justiniano et al. (2010, 2011). These shocks affect the rate at which investment goods are transformed into capital stock, and have been linked to frictions in financial markets, because financial intermediation is instrumental in facilitating investment. The third chapter shows that the importance of these investment shocks is in fact substantially diminished when collateral constraints on firms are introduced into an estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. In the presence of binding collateral constraints, risk premium shocks, which perturb interest rates and affect intertemporal substitution, supplant IST shocks as important drivers of the business cycle. ¹ Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.</p>

The great recession of 2008-2009 has brought fiscal policy modelling and analysis to the forefront, motivating a deeper understanding of fiscal issues. This thesis develops various strands of fiscal policy literature focusing on the identification of fiscal shocks, the modelling fiscal rules and the welfare implications of fiscal policy. The first few chapters are dedicated to building a rich fiscal model with debt rules for Canada and the last chapter explores the welfare implications of these fiscal rules. In the second chapter, we explore the role of temporary government spending shocks on macroeconomic fluctuations, primarily focusing on the response of private consumption. We estimate a four variable structural Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) model. We find across various identification approaches, a positive unanticipated temporary government spending shock generates a negative response in private consumption and a positive response in output. In the third chapter, we build a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to account for these empirical findings. We use Bayesian estimation techniques to estimate five debt rules that correspond to various policy instruments and report the elasticities of these instruments to the cycle and the stock of federal government debt in Canada. We find an elasticity in response to debt of 0.26 for government spending and 0.16 for transfer payments. We find insignificant elasticities for the response of average effective tax rates to debt. Our findings support the presence of strong automatic stabilizers in Canada, with an elasticity of 0.41 and 1.73 for the response of average labour and capital tax rates to the cycle. In chapter four, we extend the homogenous framework in chapter three to a heterogeneous agent setting by introducing liquidity constrained agents and analyze the welfare effects of balanced budget rules and debt rules. Our results show that debt rules improve aggregate welfare in the economy compared to a balanced budget rule. This result is driven by the welfare gains of a large share of Ricardian households. The remaining liquidity-constrained households experience a welfare loss under debt rules, indicating that a balanced budget rule is preferable for agents who cannot engage in inter-temporal consumption smoothing.

The great recession of 2008-2009 has brought fiscal policy modelling and analysis to the forefront, motivating a deeper understanding of fiscal issues. This thesis develops various strands of fiscal policy literature focusing on the identification of fiscal shocks, the modelling fiscal rules and the welfare implications of fiscal policy. The first few chapters are dedicated to building a rich fiscal model with debt rules for Canada and the last chapter explores the welfare implications of these fiscal rules. In the second chapter, we explore the role of temporary government spending shocks on macroeconomic fluctuations, primarily focusing on the response of private consumption. We estimate a four variable structural Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) model. We find across various identification approaches, a positive unanticipated temporary government spending shock generates a negative response in private consumption and a positive response in output. In the third chapter, we build a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to account for these empirical findings. We use Bayesian estimation techniques to estimate five debt rules that correspond to various policy instruments and report the elasticities of these instruments to the cycle and the stock of federal government debt in Canada. We find an elasticity in response to debt of 0.26 for government spending and 0.16 for transfer payments. We find insignificant elasticities for the response of average effective tax rates to debt. Our findings support the presence of strong automatic stabilizers in Canada, with an elasticity of 0.41 and 1.73 for the response of average labour and capital tax rates to the cycle. In chapter four, we extend the homogenous framework in chapter three to a heterogeneous agent setting by introducing liquidity constrained agents and analyze the welfare effects of balanced budget rules and debt rules. Our results show that debt rules improve aggregate welfare in the economy compared to a balanced budget rule. This result is driven by the welfare gains of a large share of Ricardian households. The remaining liquidity-constrained households experience a welfare loss under debt rules, indicating that a balanced budget rule is preferable for agents who cannot engage in inter-temporal consumption smoothing.

The global financial crisis has sparked renewed debate over the state of macroeconomic modeling, particularly in the lead up to the 2008/2009 Great Recession. The standard workhorse of macroeconomic modeling, the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, has been subject to intensive scrutiny. Over the past decade, there has been significant increase in the use of DSGE models by central banks for policy analysis, forecasting and prescriptions. The majority of central banks from developed countries have established DSGE models, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, the IMF and the Bank of England. Given their prevalence among central banks coupled with their use by policy makers for analysis and forecasting, the objective of this research paper is to assess the behavior and forecasts made by these DSGE models in the run up to a financial crisis. A DSGE model is estimated for the United States for the pre-crisis period Q1.1947 to Q4.2007. An empirical verification of the data is undertaken, whereby forecasts made by the DSGE models are compared with the observed post-crisis data. We find that the DSGE model does a poor job of forecasting the Great Recession, and gives no indication that a downturn is imminent in the economy. Within the current paradigm, there is no role for financial frictions. As such, we suggest that the building blocks of DSGE models are too simplistic to effectively model key dynamics within the economy. We use the role of debt accumulation by US households as a means of illustrating this. The global financial crisis has sparked renewed debate over the state of macroeconomic modeling, particularly in the lead up to the 2008/2009 Great Recession. The standard workhorse of macroeconomic modeling, the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, has been subject to intensive scrutiny. Over the past decade, there has been significant increase in the use of DSGE models by central banks for policy analysis, forecasting and prescriptions. The majority of central banks from developed countries have established DSGE models, including the Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, the IMF and the Bank of England. Given their prevalence among central banks coupled with their use by policy makers for analysis and forecasting, the objective of this research paper is to assess the behavior and forecasts made by these DSGE models in the run up to a financial crisis. A DSGE model is estimated for the United States for the pre-crisis period Q1.1947 to Q4.2007. An empirical verification of the data is undertaken, whereby forecasts made by the DSGE models are compared with the observed post-crisis data. We find that the DSGE model does a poor job of forecasting the Great Recession, and gives no indication that a downturn is imminent in the economy. Within the current paradigm, there is no role for financial frictions. As such, we suggest that the building blocks of DSGE models are too simplistic to effectively model key dynamics within the economy. We use the role of debt accumulation by US households as a means of illustrating this.

2019년 근로장려세제 확대로 수혜가구가 전체 가구의 20%를 차지하면서 향후 이루어지는 제도 개편은 경제 전체에 미치는 효과가 커질 것으로 예상된다. 따라서 앞으로 근로장려세제의 경제적 효과를 분석하는데는 이질적인 경제주체들의 생애주기를 고려한 일반균형(HA-LC-DSGE)모형의 역할이 중요해질 것으로 판단된다. 본 논문에서는 근로장려세제 개편과정을 정리한 뒤, 근로장려세제 관련 선행연구들을 노동공급과 소득재분배에 대한 효과로 나누어 살펴보고, HA-LC-DSGE 모형을 이용한 정책효과 분석의 필요성을 제시한다. 마지막으로 근로장려세제 확대에 관한 정책실험을 통해 HA-LC-DSGE 모형을 이용한 분석방법을 예시적으로 보여주고, 모형 구축과 결과분석 시 고려해야 될 요소들을 설명한다.\n\nAs the Earned Income Tax Credit(EITC) massively expanded in 2019, 20% of total households benefit from the credit. Due to this large reform, we expect that any future reform will also largely affect the aggregate economy; thus, the heterogeneous agent life cycle dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (HA-LC-DSGE) model will be widely used in future research. This paper reviews the EITC reforms in Korea since the first implementation and surveys the previous studies, examining the labor supply effects. We address why the HA-LC-DSGE model is necessary to examine the current EITC system in Korea. Then, we provide an example of the HA-LC-DSGE model with a policy simulation of the EITC expansion and explain the model's salient ingredients to understand the results.

Standard international real business cycle (IRBC) models formulated by Backus, Kehoe, and Kydland (BKK, 1992) have been considered a natural starting point to assess the quantitative implications of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models in an open economy environment. Since the standard IRBC model under assumptions of flexible prices and perfect competition cannot replicate all the observed characteristics of international business cycles, a number of extended models with more realistic features have been developed in the past two decades. We introduce a noisy information structure into an otherwise standard international real business cycle model with two countries. When domestic firms observe current foreign technology with some noise, predictions of the model on international correlation can be very different from those of a standard perfect information model. We show that the model can explain: (i) positive output correlation both in complete and incomplete market models; (ii) consumption correlation smaller than output correlation with an introduction of information constrained consumers; and (iii) observation of both positive and negative productivity-hours correlation in two countries.

This volume of Advances in Econometrics contains articles that examine key topics in the modeling and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Because DSGE models combine micro- and macroeconomic theory with formal econometric modeling and inference, over the past decade they have become an established framework for analyzing a variety of issues in empirical macroeconomics. The research articles make contributions in several key areas in DSGE modeling and estimation. In particular, papers cover the modeling and role of expectations, the study of optimal monetary policy in two-country models, and the problem of non-invertibility. Other interesting areas of inquiry include the analysis of parameter identification in new open economy macroeconomic models and the modeling of trend inflation shocks. The second part of the volume is devoted to articles that offer innovations in econometric methodology. These papers advance new techniques for addressing major inferential problems and include discussion and applications of Laplace-type, frequency domain, empirical likelihood and method of moments estimators.

The Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on short nominal interest rates has imposed serious constraint on stimulating and stabilizing economy of major central banks. Analysis of monetary policy by Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models under the existence of ZLB has also been an important issue from both practical and academic views for central banks and macroeconomists. However, the nonlinearity of ZLB constraint makes linear solution and estimation techniques of DSGE models unreliable and impractical. In many recent empirical works, it has been proved that the shadow rate can be used as an accurate proxy to represent the stance of unconventional monetary policy in the ZLB environment. We use shadow rate to estimate a medium-scale DSGE model based on the theoretical foundation proposed by Wu and Zhang (2016). A shadow rate New Keynesian model (No. w22856). National Bureau of Economic Research, and conduct counterfactual simulation exercises to quantify the macroeconomic effects of unconventional monetary policy implemented by Bank of Japan (BoJ). Compared with the estimation results of pre-ZLB sub-sample (1980Q1–1998Q4), the structural parameters estimated from full-sample (1980Q1–2016Q3) with the shadow rate still have very reasonable values that are consistent with most related medium-scale DSGE literature. The statistical properties of model dynamics implied by two groups of estimation are also very close. Counterfactual simulation shows that without the unconventional monetary policy, macroeconomic variables would have worse performance than their actual realizations.

PurposeThis paper seeks to explore the sensitivity of these parameters and their impact on fiscal policy outcomes. We use the existing literature to establish possible ranges for each parameter, and we examine how changes within these ranges can alter the outcomes of fiscal policy. In this way, we aim to highlight the importance of these parameters in the formulation and evaluation of fiscal policy.Design/methodology/approachThe role of fiscal policy, its effects and multipliers continues to be a subject of intense debate in macroeconomics. Despite adopting a New Keynesian approach within a macroeconomic model, the reactions of macroeconomic variables to fiscal shocks can vary across different contexts and theoretical frameworks. This paper aims to investigate these diverse reactions by conducting a sensitivity analysis of parameters. Specifically, the study examines how key variables respond to fiscal shocks under different parameter settings. By analyzing the behavioral dynamics of these variables, this research contributes to the ongoing discussion on fiscal policy. The findings offer valuable insights to enrich the understanding of the complex relationship between fiscal shocks and macroeconomic outcomes, thus facilitating informed policy debates.FindingsThis paper aims to investigate key elements of New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models. The focus is on the calibration of parameters and their impact on macroeconomic variables, such as output and inflation. The study also examines how different parameter settings affect the response of monetary policy to fiscal measures. In conclusion, this study has relied on theoretical exploration and a comprehensive review of existing literature. The parameters and their relationships have been analyzed within a robust theoretical framework, offering valuable insights for further research on how these factors influence model forecasts and inform policy recommendations derived from New Keynesian DSGE models. Moving forward, it is recommended that future work includes empirical analyses to test the reliability and effectiveness of parameter calibrations in real-world conditions. This will contribute to enhancing the accuracy and relevance of DSGE models for economic policy decision-making.Originality/valueThis study is motivated by the aim to provide a deeper understanding of the roles macroeconomic model parameters play concerning responses to expansionary fiscal policies and the subsequent reactions of monetary authorities. Comprehensive reviews that encompass this breadth of relationships within a single text are rare in the literature, making this work a valuable contribution to stimulating discussions on macroeconomic policies.

Methods to estimate dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models

Policy analysis with potentially misspecified dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models faces two challenges: estimation of parameters that are relevant for policy trade-offs and treatment of estimated deviations from the cross-equation restrictions. This paper develops and explores policy analysis approaches that are either based on a generalized shock structure for the DSGE model or the explicit modelling of deviations from cross-equation restrictions. Using post-1982 U.S. data we first quantify the degree of misspecification in a state-of-the-art DSGE model and then document the performance of different interest-rate feedback rules. We find that many of the policy prescriptions derived from the benchmark DSGE model are robust to the various treatments of misspecifications considered in this paper, but that quantitatively the cost of deviating from such prescriptions varies substantially.