Marc-André Letendre

Precautionary saving and portfolio allocation: DP by GMM

There is much research on consumption-savings problems with risky labor income and a constant interest rate and also on portfolio allocation with risky returns but nonstochastic labor income. Less is known quantitatively about the interaction between the two forms of risk. Under CRRA utility, undiversifiable income risk should be reflected in both savings rates and portfolio allocations. To quantify these effects in a model of consumption and portfolio choice, we adopt a semi-parametric projection method for solving dynamic programmes, based on generalized method of moments estimation of the parameters of approximate decision rules. We find that background income risk does affect optimal portfolios but that this effect may be difficult to detect empirically.

Investment-Specific Shocks and External Balances in a Small Open Economy Model

We set up a standard small open economy business cycle model driven by government spending shocks, neutral productivity (TFP) shocks, and investment-specific shocks. The model is calibrated to quarterly Canadian data and its predicted moments and sample paths are compared with their Canadian counterparts. We find that the model captures the dynamics in investment and in the trade balance better than special cases of the model where either one of the productivity shocks is omitted. More specifically, the model matches the variance of the trade balance-output ratio, its correlation with output and its autocorrelation. It also matches the output-investment correlation.

How much persistence should sticky-price models generate to match US data?

Abstract A number of recent papers find that sticky-price models fail to explain the persistence of output and inflation. We argue that this failure is partially attributable to low frequency fluctuations present in US data, but absent from sticky-price models.

Inventories, sticky prices, and the persistence of output and inflation

Post-war business cycle fluctuations of output and inflation are remarkably persistent. Many recent sticky-price models, however, grossly underpredict this persistence. We assess whether adding inventories to a standard sticky-price model raises the persistence of output and inflation. For this addition, we consider a shopping-cost model. In the model, consumers find shopping activities costly, and the cost of shopping depends on the stock of goods available. In this context, producers manage inventories to smooth production and to affect the cost of shopping. We find that the shopping-cost model generates a persistence for output and inflation that matches the persistence observed in the post-1985 US data.