Max Gillman

Inflation and Growth: Some Theory and Evidence

The paper presents a monetary model of endogenous growth and specifies an econometric model consistent with it. The economic model suggests a negative inflation-growth effect, and one that is stronger at lower levels of inflation. Empirical evaluation of the model is based on a large panel of OECD and APEC member countries over the years 1961-1997. The hypothesized negative inflation effect is found comprehensively for the OECD countries to be significant and, as in the theory, to increase marginally as the inflation rate falls. For APEC countries, the results from using instrumental variables also show significant evidence of a similar behavior.

Ramsey-Friedman Optimality with Banking Time

This paper conducts a Ramsey analysis within an endogenous growth cash-in-advance economy with policy commitment. Credit and money are alternative payment mechanisms that act as inputs into the household production of exchange. The credit is produced with a diminishing returns technology with Inada conditions that implies along the balanced-growth path a degree one homogeneity of effective banking time. This tightens the restrictions found within shopping time economies while providing a production basis for the Ramsey-Friedman optimum that suggests a special case of Diamond and Mirrlees (1971).

Money demand in a banking time economy

The paper presents a theory of the demand for money that combines a special case of the shopping time exchange economy with the cash-in-advance framework. The model predicts that both higher inflation and financial innovation - that reduces the cost of credit - induce agents to substitute away from money towards exchange credit. This results in an interest elasticity of money that rises with the inflation rate rather than the constant elasticity found in standard shopping time specifications. A number of the key predictions of the banking time theory are tested using quarterly data for the US and Australia. We find cointegration empirical support for the model, with robustness checks and a comparison to a standard specification.

Money Demand: Cash-in-Advance Meets Shopping Time

The paper presents a theory of the demand for money that combines a special case of the shopping time exchange economy with the cash-in-advance framework. The model predicts that both higher inflation and financial innovation - that reduces the cost of credit - induces agents to substitute away from money towards exchange credit. This results in an interest elasticity of money that rises with the inflation rate rather than the constant elasticity found in standard shopping time specifications. A number of the key predictions of the banking time theory are tested using quarterly data for the US and Australia. We find empirical support for some aspects of the model.

The problem of social cost: The role of the state

This essay presents a theory of the State as derived from the writings of Coase, Stigler, and Smith. It argues that the state may find a role in (1) lowering the level of transactions costs; and (2) redistributing property rights given the level of non‐zero transactions costs. These tenets suggest an explanation for the secular growth of government. Also, alternative to the Marshallian theory of differing marginal utilities of a dollar of income, the essay offers a more general theory of redistribution in a way consistent with Coase’s (1992) concept of a transactions‐cost‐based, more general, price theory.

Evidence from a Panel of Transition Countries: The Effect of Inflation on Growth

The paper examines the effect of inflation on growth in transition countries. It presents panel data evidence for 13 transition countries over the 1990–2003 period; it uses a fixed effects panel approach to account for possible bias from correlations among the unobserved effects and the observed country heterogeneity. The results find a strong, robust, negative effect on growth of inflation or its standard deviation, and one that appears to decline in magnitude as the inflation rate increases, as seen for OECD countries. And the results include a role for a normalized money demand in affecting growth, as well as for a convergence variable, a trade variable and a government share variable. Robustness of the baseline single-equation model is examined by expanding this into a three-equation simultaneous system of output growth, inflation and money demand that allows for possible simultaneity bias in the baseline model.

Tax Evasion, Human Capital, and Productivity-Induced Tax Rate Reduction

Growth in the human capital sector’s productivity explains in part how US postwar growth and welfare could have increased while US tax rates declined. Modeling tax evasion within an endogenous growth model with human capital, an upward trend in goods and human capital sectors gradually decreases tax evasion and allows for tax rate reduction. Using estimated goods and human capital sectoral productivities, the model explains 30 percent of the actual decline in a weighted average of postwar US top marginal personal and corporate tax rates. The productivity increases are asymmetric in a fashion related to that of McGrattan and Prescott.

Keynes's Treatise : aggregate price theory for modern analysis?

The paper explores the theory of the aggregate price, profit, and business fluctuations in Keynes Treatise for its implications for modern macro-economic analysis. As in the Treatise, profits are first defined within a theory of the agregate price level, as aggregate investment minus saving. Deriving aggregate total revenue and aggregate total cost from this price theory, the paper shows how to construct a version of the Keynesian cross diagram. The cross construction suggests an important qualification for fiscal policy, that total cost does not shift. Then, using a neoclassical definition of profit and the total-cost / total-revenue approach, the paper derives aggregate supply, and then adds aggregate demand in an integrated framework. Comparative statics of the AS-AD analysis and the central role of profit in the Treatise suggest that a focus on profit might be useful in identifying exogenous technology shocks of real business cycle theory.

Tuning in RBC Growth Spectra

For US postwar data, the paper explains an array of RBC puzzles by adding to the standard RBC model external margins for both physical capital and human capital, and examining model fit with data across business cycle (BC) and low frequency (LF) as well as Medium Cycle (MC) windows. The model results in a goods sector productivity shock with a 7500 times smaller variance than the standard RBC model, implying greatly improved amplification of the shock. In addition, output growth persistence autocorrelation profiles are modeled as in data, thus improving upon the propagation puzzle. The model produces a consumption-output ratio as in the business cycle data, a labor share of output that is countercyclic as in data, and human capital investment time that is countercyclic as in data. Also the capacity utilization rate is procyclic within BC, LF and MC windows as in data; including labor moments, a wide array of moments are explained for correlations, volatilities and growth persistence across these business cycle and lower frequency windows. Using a metric of fit, along with a uniform grid search, measures of fit are presented by window and category. In the BC window, key correlations have only an average 15% deviation from the data moments; the LF growth persistence has only an average 8% deviation from the data moments.