Three essays on dynamic general equilibrium models

This thesis aims at contributing to the existing studies in the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, particularly in the new Keynesian models, on three aspects. It consists of three chapters. Chapter 2 is on “Dynamic new Keynesian Life-Cycle Model. ” Chapter 3 is on “Re-thinking Price Stability in an Economy with Endogenous Firm Entry: Real Imperfections under Product Variety. ” Chapter 4 is on “Growth Expectation. ” Abstracts of each Chapter are as follows. In Chapter 2, we first construct a dynamic new Keynesian model that incorporates life-cycle behavior a la Gertler (1999), in order to study whether structural shocks to the economy have asymmetric effects on heterogeneous agents, namely workers and retirees. We also examine whether considerations of life-cycle and demographic structure alter the dynamic properties of the monetary business cycle model, specifically the degree of amplification in impulse responses. According to our simulation results, shocks indeed have asymmetric impacts on different households and the demographic structure does alter the size of responses against shocks by changing the trade-off between substitution and income effects. In Chapter 3, we re-think price stability in an economy with endogenous firm entry under possible distortions. We first demonstrate that endogenous entry causes real imperfections. Reflecting fluctuations in the number of varieties, the gap between the natural and the efficient level of output is no longer constant and variant to shocks. As a result, the central bank faces a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and welfare-relevant output gap. Then, we show that this results in the non-zero optimal rate of inflation. We further check whether welfare can be enhanced by targeting welfare-based inflation instead of cross-sectional average inflation contrary to the previous findings. Simulations even with such distortions as unknown natural interest rate or no fiscal remedy for efficient non-stochastic steady states, however, support cross-sectional average inflation targeting although there may exist some small gains by referring also to welfare-based inflation rates. Incomplete stabilization may enhance welfare in an economy when agents cannot internalize the externality on the love for variety. Chapter 4 is about the difficulty in producing reasonable business cycles for the expectation shock about higher future technology. For a long time, changes in expectations about the future have been thought to be significant sources of economic fluctuations, as argued by Pigou (1926). Although creating such an expectation-driven cycle (the Pigou cycle) in equilibrium business cycle models was considered to be a difficult challenge, as pointed out by Barro and King (1984), recently, several researchers have succeeded in producing the Pigou cycle by balancing the tension between the wealth effect and the substitution effect stemming from the higher expected future productivity. Seminal research by Christiano et al. (2007a) explains the “stock market boom-bust cycles,” characterized by increases in consumption, labor inputs, investment and the stock prices relating to high expected future technology levels, by introducing investment growth adjustment costs, habit formation in consumption, sticky prices and an inflation-targeting central bank. We, however, show that such a cycle is difficult to generate based on “growth expectation,” which reflect expectations of higher productivity growth rates. Thus, Barro and King’s (1984) prediction still applies.