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Full-Text Articles in Macroeconomics

Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh Nov 2016

Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the macroeconomic impact of reduced labor market friction on the U.S. business cycle after the mid-1980s. The first two essays investigate the relationship between labor market flexibility and macroeconomic stability from a post-Keynesian perspective. In the third essay which reviews the relationship between labor market flexibility and patterns of U.S. business cycle, I test the argument that after 1985 Okun’s coefficient became larger due to the flexible labor market. In essay 1, considering two aspects of labor market flexibility, employment flexibility and real wage flexibility, I adopt the flex-output model (Skott, 2015) to first discuss employment flexibility …


Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm Nov 2016

Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm

Doctoral Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses on the political economy of rent seeking. Using trading in financial markets, patent litigation and managerial privilege as descriptive examples from the modern economy, it identifies situations where rent seeking opportunities occur. The challenge of correctly distinguishing between productive activities and rent seeking activities demonstrate the empirical challenges of examining rent seeking. This chapter also suggests that in addition to the opportunity cost of physical capital, modern rent seeking has a significant opportunity cost in the form of the misallocation of human capital. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between increased rent seeking, aggregate demand, …


Three Essays On U.S. Household Debt And The Sources Of Systemic Financial Fragility, Thomas Herndon Nov 2016

Three Essays On U.S. Household Debt And The Sources Of Systemic Financial Fragility, Thomas Herndon

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays which analyze the role of household debt in the financial crisis of 2007-2009, and weak recovery that followed. In these essays, I pursue the following research topics: 1) Estimation of the effects of mortgage fraud on losses to foreclosure, 2) Estimation of whether loan modifications increased or decreased debt, and 3) Analyzing the historical evolution of housing finance regulation to advance a proposal for reform. While formally independent, these essays share a common theoretical perspective located at the intersection of financial macroeconomics and political economy. These essays analyze how conflicts of interest and inside …