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Full-Text Articles in Macroeconomics
Can A Representative Agent Model Represent A Heterogeneous Agent Economy?, Sungbae An, Yongsung Chang, Sun-Bin Kim
Can A Representative Agent Model Represent A Heterogeneous Agent Economy?, Sungbae An, Yongsung Chang, Sun-Bin Kim
Research Collection School Of Economics
Accounting for observed fluctuations in aggregate employment, consumption, and real wage using the optimality conditions of a representative household requires preferences that are incompatible with economic priors. In order to reconcile theory with data, we construct a model with heterogeneous agents whose decisions are difficult to aggregate because of incomplete capital markets and the indivisible nature of labor supply. If we were to explain the model-generated aggregate time series using decisions of a stand-in household, such a household must have a nonconcave or unstable utility as is often found with the aggregate US data.
Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha
Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Brishti Guha, Ashok S. Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case, consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping generations model, this leads naturally to multiple and unstable equilibria. Under static expectations, it also leads to a well-defined dynamics, including possible historical traps, implosions involving ever-diminishing capital stock and ever-increasing interest rates, and the feasibility of optimal one-time interventions.
Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Target Saving In An Overlapping Generations Model, Ashok S. Guha, Brishti Guha
Research Collection School Of Economics
We examine a model in which the utility function has been engineered so that it is optimal for consumers to aim for a fixed target level of retirement resources. In this case consumption displays excess sensitivity to current income as well as perfect old age insurance. In an overlapping generations model, this leads naturally to multiple and unstable equilibria. Under static expectations, it also leads to a well-defined dynamics, including possible historical traps, implosions involving ever-diminishing capital stock and ever-increasing interest rates, and the feasibility of optimal one-time interventions.