showing 23 related works from this author
Households' Balance Sheets and the Effect of Fiscal Policy
2020
En este trabajo identificamos seis tipos de hogares en Estados Unidos en funcion de la composicion de su balance financiero en el Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. Desde 1999 se observa una acusada disminucion en la proporcion de hogares ahorradores y un aumento en la proporcion de hogares endeudados, en particular aquellos que presentan una riqueza neta negativa. Utilizando como marco teorico un modelo neokeynesiano con estos seis tipos de hogares, asi como con imperfecciones en los mercados de credito y de trabajo, exploramos como los cambios en la distribucion de los hogares en funcion de su balance afectan la transmision de los shocks del gasto publico al consumo agregado, al empleo y al…
Tax Reforms and Labour-market Performance: An Evaluation for Spain using REMS
2009
This paper uses REMS, a Rational Expectations Model of the Spanish economy designed by Boscá et al (2007), to analyse the effects of lowering the overall tax wedge to the level prevailing in the US. Our results partially confirm previous findings in the literature: a reduction in the overall tax wedge of 19.5 points, in order to reach the US levels, has a positive effect in the long run, increasing total hours by about 7 per cent and GDP by about 8 percentage points. In terms of GDP per adult, these results account for 1/4 of the gap with respect to the US, but imply a reduction of only one percentage point in the labour productivity gap. The rise in total hours per adult is explained by a …
Search, Nash bargaining and rule-of-thumb consumers
2011
Abstract This paper analyses the effects of introducing two typical Keynesian features, namely rule-of-thumb (RoT) consumers and consumption habits, into a standard labour market search model. RoT consumers use the margin that hours and wage negotiation provides them to improve their lifetime utility, by narrowing the gap in utility with respect to Ricardian consumers. This margin for intertemporal optimisation has not been studied yet, because this class of restricted agents has been mainly used in models with no equilibrium unemployment. Our approach allows for a deeper study of the effects of shocks on vacancies, unemployment, hours, wages and how they interact. As habits increase, RoT c…
Search, Nash Bargaining and Rule of Thumb Consumers
2009
This paper analyses the effects of introducing typical Keynesian features, namely rule-of-thumb consumers and consumption habits, into a standard labour market search model. It is a well-known fact that labour market matching with Nash-wage bargaining improves the ability of the standard real business cycle model to replicate some of the cyclical properties featuring the labour market. However, when habits and rule-of-thumb consumers are taken into account, the labour market search model gains extra power to reproduce some of the stylised facts characterising the US labour market, as well as other business cycle facts concerning aggregate consumption and investment behaviour.
Households' Balance Sheets and the Effect of Fiscal Policy
2022
Using households' balance-sheet composition in the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, we identify six household types. Since 1999, there has been a decline in the share of patient households and an increase in the share of impatient households with negative wealth. Using a six-agent New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions, we explore how changes in households' shares affect the transmission of government spending shocks. We show that the relative share of households in the left tail of the wealth distribution plays a key role in the aggregate marginal propensity to consume, the magnitude of fiscal multipliers, and the distributional consequences of government spending shocks. W…
Household Leverage and Fiscal Multipliers
2011
We study the size of fiscal multipliers in response to a government spending shock under different household leverage conditions in a general equilibrium setting with search and matching frictions. We allow for different levels of household indebtedness by changing the intensive margin of borrowing (loan-to-value ratio), as well as the extensive margin, defined as the number of borrowers over total population. The interaction between the consumption decisions of agents with limited access to credit and the process of wage bargaining and vacancy posting delivers two main results: (a) higher initial leverage makes it more likely to find output multipliers higher than one; and (b) a positive g…
Job Creation in Spain: Productivity Growth, Labour Market Reforms or both?
2010
The benefits implied by changing the growth model are at the heart ofthe heated political and economic debate in Spain. Increases in productivity and the reallocation of employment towards more innovative sectors are defended as the panacea for most of the ills afflicting the Spanish economy. In this paper we use a DSGE model with price rigidities, and labour market search frictions a la Mortensen-issarides, to assess the effects of the change in the growth model onunemployment. In so doing, we assume that the vigorous demand shock which has been mostly responsible for recent economic growth in Spain will be successfully substituted by a productivity shock as the main driver of Spain‘s…
The effect of school quality on educational attainment and wages
1998
The paper examines the effects of school pupil-teacher ratios and type of school on educational attainment and wages using the British National Child Development survey (NCDS). The NCDS is a panel survey which has followed a cohort of individuals born in March 1958, and has a rich set of background variables recorded throughout the individual's life. The results suggest that, once we control for ability and family background, the pupil-teacher ratio has no impact on educational qualifications or on male wages. It has an impact on women’s wages at the age of 33, particularly those of low ability. We also find evidence that those who attend selective schools have better educational outcomes a…
Household Debt and Fiscal Multipliers
2015
We study the size of government spending multipliers in a general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions in which we allow for different levels of household indebtedness. The main results of the paper are: (a) the presence of impatient households and private debt helps generate government spending multipliers greater than 1; (b) as financial conditions worsen and impatient consumers find it more difficult to borrow (i.e. in a credit crunch), the size of the government spending multiplier falls; (c) conversely, employment, vacancies and unemployment multipliers are larger when access to credit becomes more difficult; and (d) the model explains the observed pattern of responses …
Instruments, rules, and household debt: the effects of fiscal policy
2015
In this paper, we look at the interplay between the level of household leverage in the economy and fiscal policy, the latter characterised by different combinations of instruments and rules. When the fiscal rule is defined on lump-sum transfers, government spending or consumption taxes, the impact multipliers of transitory fiscal shocks become substantially amplified in an environment of easy access to credit by impatient consumers, regardless of the primary instruments used. However, when the government reacts to debt deviations by raising distortionary taxes on income, labour or capital, the effects of household debt on the size of the impact output multipliers vanish or even reverse, no …
Household debt and labor market fluctuations
2011
Abstract The co-movements of labor productivity with output, total hours, vacancies and unemployment have changed since the mid 1980s. This paper offers an explanation for the sharp break in the fluctuations of labor market variables based on endogenous labor supply decisions following the mortgage market deregulation. We set up a search model with efficient bargaining and financial frictions, in which impatient borrowers can take an amount of credit that cannot exceed a proportion of the expected value of their real estate holdings. When borrowers' equity requirements are low, the impact of a positive technology shock on the marginal utility of consumption is strengthened, which in turn re…
Gender Imbalance across Subfields in Economics: When Does It Start?
2021
We investigate the marked gender imbalance across subfields in economics and connect it with the relative scarcity of female students enrolling in economics. First, tracking authorship in the Ameri...
Fiscal Devaluations in EMU
2013
2013SummaryWe use a small open economy general equilibrium model to analyse the effects of a fiscal devalua-tion in an EMU country. The model has been calibrated for the Spanish economy, which is a goodexample of the advantages of a change in the tax mix given that its tax system shows a positive biasin the ratio of social security contributions over consumption taxes. The preliminary empirical evi-dence for European countries shows that this bias was negatively correlated with the current accountbalance in the expansionary years leading up to the 2009 crisis, a period when many EMU membersaccumulated large external imbalances. Our simulation results point to significant positive effects of…
A rational expectations model for simulation and policy evaluation of the Spanish economy
2010
This paper presents the model used for simulation purposes within the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. REMS (a Rational Expectations Model for the Spanish economy) is a small open economy dynamic general equilibrium model in the vein of the New-Neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis models, with a strongly micro-founded system of equations. In the long run REMS behaves in accordance with the neoclassical growth model. In the short run, it incorporates nominal, real and financial frictions. Real frictions include adjustment costs in consumption (via habits in consumption and rule-of-thumb households) and investment into physical capital. Due to financial frictions, there is no per…
A feedback mechanism controls rDNA copy number evolution in yeast independently of natural selection.
2022
Ribosomal DNA (rDNA) is the genetic loci that encodes rRNA in eukaryotes. It is typically arranged as tandem repeats that vary in copy number within the same species. We have recently shown that rDNA repeats copy number in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is controlled by cell volume via a feedback circuit that senses cell volume by means of the concentration of the free upstream activator factor (UAF). The UAF strongly binds the rDNA gene promoter, but is also able to repress SIR2 deacetylase gene transcription that, in turn, represses rDNA amplification. In this way, the cells with a smaller DNA copy number than what is optimal evolve to increase that copy number until they reach a numb…
Alternative tuition fees schemes: a simulation exercise
2021
In this paper we use a theoretical model of effort optimization on the part of university students to simulate the effects of different tuition fees schemes. For each of such schemes, we present an...
Evaluating the Regional Impact of a New Road on Tourism
2004
Ferri J. (2004) Evaluating the regional impact of a new road on tourism, Reg. Studies 38, 409–418. The aim of this work is to establish whether the opening of a motorway that extends along the east coast of Spain has significantly contributed to expanding hotel tourism in the Valencia region. Some of the most important tourist destinations in Spain, both domestic and international, are located in this region, such as Benidorm, Peniscola and Gandia. The A-7 motorway, also part of the E-15 road network, is not only a faster and safer means of road communication for tourists but also provides a new gate to Europe, connecting with other motorways. Using monthly data on nights spent in hotels by…
MATRIZ DE CONTABILIDAD SOCIAL DE 1995 PARA ESPAÑA (MCS-95)
2005
A Social Accounting Matrix for Spain in 1995 (MCS-95) is shown in this paper. This new data base contains some novelties in relation to the earlier MCS-90, both in the methodology applied and in the use of new data sources. As to the methodological innovation, the new input output framework of the European Accounting system (SEC-95) is used in the construction of the MCS-95. Also the estimation procedure and the adjustment of some of the accounts is made applying a method based on minimum entropy. In addition, statistical sources that were not used previously, are exploited in the MCS-95, in particular the ECPH for Spain and the Spanish Survey of Wage Structure. Finally, the SAM-LEG directi…
Labor Market Search, Housing Prices and Borrowing Constraints.
2010
Mortgage market deregulation in the early 1980s coincided in time with a sharp break in the cyclical behavior of many variables related to housing and to the labor market. This paper analyses the joint dynamics of labor market variables, output and housing prices in a search model with efficient bargaining and financial frictions. In a setting of household heterogeneity, only mortgaged-backed loans are available for impatient households, whose borrowing cannot exceed a proportion of the expected value of their real estate holdings. This feature of the credit market, together with search and matching frictions in the labor market, establish a strong link between credit constraints and consum…
ESTIMATION OF AN EXTENDED SAM WITH HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION FOR SPAIN 1995
2005
This paper implements the conceptual framework sketched by Pyatt (1990) to construct an extended Social Accounting Matrix for Spain in 1995 (ESAM-95) to consider, in addition to the market economy, the production of services provided by households through unpaid work. In doing so, the ESAM-95 integrates the accounts related to market activities (ESA accounts) with non-market activities (non-ESA accounts) in a consistent way. Additional classifications are introduced in both ESA and non-ESA accounts in order to disaggregate the institutional accounts by household type and those of production factors by educational level and gender. The extended SAM is useful to calibrate CGE models in which …
Time Use and Food Taxation in Spain
2009
We evaluate the welfare impact of changing the VAT on food in a context in which households can produce home meals for own consumption that compete with meals served in restaurants. Home production of meals requires the combination of food and time inputs. The fiscal treatment in home production of both the inputs and the final product differs from market production of meals, generating different channels of inefficiency. We calibrate a simple general-equilibrium model for the Spanish economy that identifies three types of consumers according to their income, and simulate the effects of some experiments related to how food is taxed. The results suggest that if we focus only on aggregate wel…
Financial and fiscal shocks in the great recession and recovery of the Spanish economy
2020
In this paper we develop and estimate a new Bayesian DSGE model for the Spanish economy that has been designed to evaluate different structural reforms. The small open economy model incorporates a banking sector, consumers and entrepreneurs who accumulate debt, and a rich fiscal structure and monopolistic competition in products and labor markets, for a country in a currency union, with no independent monetary policy. The model can be used to evaluate ex-ante and ex-post policies and structural reforms and to decompose the evolution of macroeconomic aggregates according to different shocks. In particular, we estimate the contribution of financial and fiscal shocks to both the crisis of the …
Tuition fees and student effort at university
2018
Abstract This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence that an increase in tuition fees may boost university students’ academic effort. We examine the tuition fee rise introduced in 2012 by Spanish universities, where students register and pay for their chosen modules and fees increase each time students retake a module until they pass it. Data refer to students of economics, business and medicine at the University of Valencia during 2010–2014. The fact that some students pay fees in full while others are exempt from payment provides an identifying source of variation that we exploit using a flexible difference-in-differences methodology.