Jess Benhabib

And (2009)

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel

Recent research has concluded that the historical evidence only provides weak support for the contention that deflation episodes are harmful to economic growth. In this paper, we revisit this...

Redistribution,Taxes,andthe Median Voter ∗ (2008)

Marco Bassetto, Jess Benhabib, Jel Numbers H, Onur Ozgur

We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the...

Advertising, Mass Consumption and Capitalism ∗ (2008)

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

Western societies have developed into a historically new stage in the evolution of capitalism, one which is characterized by corporations exercising monopolistic power and sustaining demand by...

2005] “Modeling Internal Commitment Mechanisms and SelfControl: A Neuroeconomics Approach to Consumption-Saving Decisions.” Gqmes and Economic Behavior (2008)

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

We provide a new model of consumption-saving decisions which explicitly allows for internal commitment mechanisms and self-control. Agents have the ability to invoke either automatic processes that...

Abstract (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Yi Wen

We show that under indeterminacy aggregate demand shocks are able to explain not only aspects of actual fluctuations that standard RBC models predict fairly well, but also aspects of actual...

The Monetary Transmission Mechanism 1 by (2007)

Jess Benhabib, David Hume, Of Money

support. Farmer’s research was supported by N.S.F. grant #952912. Since the writing of David Hume, in the eighteenth century, there has been a general agreement amongst economists that an increase...

The Monetary Transmission Mechanism * Address for Correspondence: by (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Badia Fiesolana

Recent literature on structural vector autoregressions has attempted to identify the effects on the economy of an increase in the stock of money. This work has led to a broad consensus. Initially, an...

Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé ‡ Rutgers University (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Martín Uribe

Since John Taylor’s (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one...

Advertising, Mass Consumption and Capitalism ∗ (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

Western societies have developed into a historically new stage in the evolution of capitalism, one which is characterized by corporations exercising monopolistic power and sustaining demand by...

Abstract (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Yi Wen

We show that under indeterminacy aggregate demand shocks are able to explain not only aspects of actual °uctuations that standard RBC models predict fairly well, but also aspects of actual...

Growth and Investment Across Countries: Are Primitives All That Matter? (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel

This paper examines the channels through which country characteristics affect growth. We investigate whether “primitives, ” or rates of factor accumulation, are sufficient statistics for economic...

Backward-Looking Interest-Rate Rules, Interest Rate Smoothing, (2007)

And Macroeconomic Instability, Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-grohé, Martín Uribe, Interest-rate Rules, Interest Rate, ...

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

Optimal Migration (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Boyan Jovanovic

We ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare. We …nd that skill-neutral policies are never optimal. An egalitarian welfare function induces a policy that entails moving mainly...

Age, Luck, and Inheritance (Preliminary) (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Shenghao Zhu

We present a mechanism to analytically generate a double Pareto distri-bution of wealth in a continuous time OLG model with optimizing agents who have bequest motives, and are subject to stochastic...

Optimal Migration (2007)

Jess Benhabib, Boyan Jovanovic

We ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare. We …nd that skill-neutral policies are never optimal. An egalitarian welfare function induces a policy that entails moving mainly...

Abstract (2006)

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin, Andrew Schotter

In this paper we elicit preferences for money-time pairs via experimental techniques. We estimate a general specification of discounting that nests exponential and hyperbolic discounting, as well as...

The Design of Monetary and Fiscal Policy: A Global Perspective (2005)

Jess Benhabib, Stefano Eusepi, John Leahy, Hakan Tasci, Martin Uribe

We study the the emergence of multiple equilibria in models with capital and bonds under various monetary and …scal policies. We show that the presence of capital is indeed another independent...

Human capital and technology diffusion (2005)

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel, Rody Manuelli, Chris Papageorgiou

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology difusion can be exponential, which would predict that...

Human capital and technology diffusion (2005)

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel, Rody Manuelli, Chris Papageorgiou

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology difusion can be exponential, which would predict that...

Federal Reserve Board (2005)

Jess Benhabib, Roberto Perli, Plutarchos Sakellaris

In this paper we explore whether the changing composition of output in response to technology shocks can play a significant role in the propagation of shocks over time. For this purpose we study two...

Interest Rate Policy in Continuous Time with Discrete Delays ∗ (2003)

Jess Benhabib

We study the design of monetary policy in a continuous time framework with delays. More explicitly, we consider a linear, flexible price model where inflation and nominal interest rates chage...

The Underestimated Virtues of the Two-Sector AK Model (2003)

Gabriel J. Felbermayr, Omar Licandro, Documento De Trabajo, Jess Benhabib, Larry Jones

We show that the two-sector AK model proposed by Rebelo (1991) can be read as an endogenous growth extension of Greenwood, Hercowitz and Krusell (1997). By confining constant returns to capital to...

Chaotic Interest Rate Rules (2002)

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-grohé, Martín Uribe

A growing empirical and theoretical literature argues in favor of specifying monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules. That is, rules whereby the nominal interest rate...

Avoiding Liquidity Traps (2002)

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-grohé, Martín Uribe

Once the zero bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account, Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rules give rise to unintended self-fulfilling decelerating inflation paths and aggregate...

Another View of Investment: 40 Years Later (2001)

Jess Benhabib, Bart Hobijn

Does it matter whether productivity growth is embodied in new machines or whether it is disembodied and lifts the productivity of all equipment? Phelps (1962) argued that the composition of the...

Indeterminacy in a Model with Sector-Specific Externalities (1999)

Sharon G. Harrison, Jess Benhabib, Jang-ting Guo, Michael Horvath, Kiminori Matsuyama, Kay Robbins

I examine a model with two sectors of production: consumption and investment. In the model, indeterminacy of equilibria results due to the presence of small sector-specific externalities in...

The Political Economy of Redistribution under Democracy,” working paper (1993)

Jess Benhabib, Adam Przeworski

We ask what redistributions of income and assets are feasible in a democracy, given the initial assets and their distribution. The question is motivated by the possibility that if redistribution is...

Homework in macroeconomics: household production and aggregate fluctuations

Jess Benhabib, Richard Rogerson, Randall Wright

This paper explores some macroeconomic implications of including household production in an otherwise standard real business cycle model. We calibrate the model based on microeconomic evidence and...

Backward-Looking Interest-Rate Rules, Interest-Rate Smoothing, and Macroeconomic Instability

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

The Design of Monetary and Fiscal Policy: A Global Perspective

Stefano Eusepi, Jess Benhabib

We study the the emergence of multiple equilibria in models with capital and bonds under various monetary and fiscal policies. We show that the presence of capital is indeed another independent...

Chaotic Interest Rate Rules: Expanded Version

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

A growing empirical and theoretical literature argues in favor of specifying monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules. That is, rules whereby the nominal interest rate...

Redistribution, Taxes and the Median Voter

Marco Bassetto, Jess Benhabib

We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the...

Backward-looking interest-rate rules, interest-rate smoothing, and macroeconomic instability

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

Avoiding Liquidity Traps

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

Once the zero bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account, Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules give rise to unintended self-fulfilling decelerating inflation paths and aggregate...

Redistribution, taxes, and the median voter

Marco Bassetto, Jess Benhabib

We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the...

Redistribution, Taxes and the Median Voter

Jess Benhabib, Marco Bassetto

We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the...

Avoiding Liquidity Traps

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

Once the zero bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account, Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rules give rise to unintended self-fulfilling decelerating inflation paths and aggregate...

Human Capital and Technology Diffusion

Benhabib, Jess, Spiegel, Mark M., Philippe Aghion, Steven Durlauf

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology diffusion can be exponential, which would predict that...

Optimal Migration: A World Perspective

Jess Benhabib, Boyan Jovanovic

We ask what level of migration would maximize world welfare. We find that skill-neutral policies are never optimal. An egalitarian welfare function induces a policy that entails moving mainly...

Social Conflict

Jess Benhabib, Aldo Rustichini

In this paper we study the relationship between wealth, income distribution and growth in a game-theoretic context in which property rights are not completely enforceable. We consider equilibrium...

Vintage Capital, Investment and Growth

Jess Benhabib, Aldo Rustichini

We study the dynamics of growth and investment in a continuous time model with vintage capital. Vintage capital models may be characterized by non-exponential rates of depreciation and technical...

Externalities and Growth Accounting

Jess Benhabib, Boyan Jovanovic

We reexamine several bodies of data on the growth of output, labor, and capital, within the context of a model that admits the possibility of an externality to the capital input. The model is an...

Monetary Policy and Multiple Equilibria

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

This paper characterizes conditions under which interest-rate feedback rules that set the nominal interest rate as an increasing function of the inflation rate induce aggregate instability by...

Externalities and Growth Accounting.

Benhabib, Jess, Jovanovic, Boyan

This paper tackles two puzzles: the high empirical elasticity of aggregte output with respect to the measured capital input and the seemingly high variability of growth rates over countries in the...

Chaotic Interest Rate Rules

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie, Uribe, Martin

When the Central Bank sets nominal rates as a a non-decreasing function of the inflation rate to stabilize the economy, that is it uses a Taylor Rule, the zero lower bound on interest rates may...

Monetary policy and multiple equilibria

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

In this paper, we characterize conditions under which interest rate feedback rules whereby the nominal interest rate is set as an increasing function of the inflation rate generate multiple...

Growth and investment across countries

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel

This paper examines the channels through which country characteristics affect growth. We investigate whether "primitives," or rates of factor accumulation, are sufficient statistics for economic...

Human capital and technology diffusion

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology diffusion can be exponential, which would predict that...

Moderate inflation and the deflation-depression link

Jess Benhabib, Mark M. Spiegel

In a recent paper, Atkeson and Kehoe (2004) demonstrated the lack of a robust empirical relationship between inflation and growth for a cross-section of countries with 19th and 20th century data,...

Social Conflict and Growth.

Benhabib, Jess, Rustichini, Aldo

Despite the predictions of the neoclassical theory of economic growth, we observe that poor countries have invested at lower rates and have not grown faster than rich countries. To explain these...

Indeterminacy and sunspots in macroeconomics

Benhabib, Jess, Farmer, Roger E.A., J. B. Taylor, M. Woodford

This chapter gives an overview of the recent literature on indeterminacy and sunspots in macroeconomics. It discusses of some of the conceptual and the technical aspects of this literature, and...

The Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Jess Benhabib

Recent literature on structural vector autoregressions has attempted to identify the effects on the economy of an increase in the stock of money. This work has led to a broad concensus. Initially, an...

The design of monetary and fiscal policy: a global perspective

Jess Benhabib, Stefano Eusepi

We study the emergence of multiple equilibria in models with capital and bonds under various monetary and fiscal policies. We show that the presence of capital is indeed another independent source of...

Backward-Looking Interest Rate Rules, Interest Rate Smoothing and Macroeconomic Instability

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie, Uribe, Martín

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

The Role of Financial Development in Growth and Investment.

Benhabib, Jess, Spiegel, Mark M

This article decomposes the well-documented relationship between financial development and growth. We examine whether financial development affects growth solely through its contribution to growth in...

Human capital and technology diffusion

Jess Benhabib, Mark Spiegel

This paper generalizes the Nelson-Phelps catch-up model of technology diffusion facilitated by levels of human capital. We allow for the possibility that the pattern of technology diffusion can be...

On the economics of fiscal populism in an open economy

Jess Benhabib, Andres Velasco

We study a representative agent, open economy in which government-provided services that enter the domestic production function must be financed with distortionary taxes, and focus on the optimal...

Backward-looking interest-rate rules, interest-rate smoothing, and macroeconomic instability

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

The Political Economy of Redistribution under Democracy

Adam Przeworski, Jess Benhabib

We ask what redistributions of income and assets are feasible in a democracy, given the initial assets and their distribution. The question is motivated by the possibility that if redistribution is...

Is Discounting Hyperbolic? Experimental Evidence

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

A vast empirical evidence in experimental psychology on time discounting has documented various behavioral anomalies which cast doubts on the empirical support for exponential discounting, to date...

Redistribution, Taxes, and the Median Voter

Marco Bassetto, Jess Benhabib

We study a simple model of production, accumulation, and redistribution, where agents are heterogeneous in their initial wealth, and a sequence of redistributive tax rates is voted upon. Though the...

The distribution of wealth and redistributive policies

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

In this paper we study theoretically the dynamics of the distribution of wealth in an Overlapping Generation economy with bequest and various forms of redistributive taxation. We characterize the...

Indeterminacy and Sector-specific Externalities

Benhabib, Jess, Farmer, Roger E A

We introduce mild increasing returns to scale into a version of the Real Business Cycle model. These increasing returns to scale occur as a consequence of sector-specific externalities, that is,...

The Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Benhabib, Jess, Farmer, Roger E A

In this paper we take as given that market economies are characterized by a set of stylized responses to increases in the stock of money. Innovations to the stock of money lead to increased output...

The Perils of Taylor Rules

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie, Uribe, Martín

Since John Taylor's (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one...

Monetary Policy and Multiple Equilibria

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie, Uribe, Martín

In this paper, we characterize conditions under which interest rate feedback rules that set the nominal interest rate as an increasing function of the inflation rate induce aggregate instability by...

Avoiding Liquidity Traps

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie, Uribe, Martín

Once the zero-bound on nominal interest rates is taken into account, Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rules give rise to unintended self-fulfilling decelerating inflation paths and aggregate...

Interest Rate Policy in Continuous Time with Discrete Delays.

Benhabib, Jess

We study the design of monetary policy in a continuous-time framework with delays. More explicitly, we consider a linear, flexible-price model where inflation and nominal interest rates change...

Public spending and optimal taxes without commitment

Andrés Velasco, Jess Benhabib, Aldo Rustichini

We consider a representative agent, infinite-horizon economy where production requires private and public capital. The supply of public capital is financed through distortionary taxation. The optimal...

research article : Indeterminacy and cycles in two-sector discrete-time model

Kazuo Nishimura, Jess Benhabib, Alain Venditti

We consider a discrete-time two-sector Cobb-Douglas economy with positive sector specific external effects. We show that indeterminacy of steady states and cycles can easily arise with constant or...

ENDOGENOUS FLUCTUATIONS IN THE BARRO-BECKER THEORY OF FERTILITY

Benhabib, Jess, Nishimura, Kazuo

per capita income ; population growth ; capital formation ; fertility

GROWTH ACCOUNTING AND EXTERNALITIES

Benhabib, Jess, Jovanovic, Boyan

labour market ; economic growth ; economic models

A VINTAGE CAPITAL MODEL OF INVESTMENT AND GROWTH: THEORY AND EVIDENCE.

Benhabib, Jess, Rustichini, Aldo

investments ; economic equilibrium ; empirical methods ; economic models

EQUILIBRIUM CYCLING WITH SMALL DISCOUNTING: A NOTE

Benhabib, Jess, Rustichini, Aldo

economic growth ; economic equilibrium ; technology

ENDOGENOUS FERTILITY AND GROWTH

Benhabib, Jess, Nishimura, Kazuo

fertility ; technological change ; children ; schooling ; human resources ; economic growth

Indeterminacy and Increasing Returns

Benhabib, Jess, Farmer, Roger E.A.

Growth rate ; investments ; technology ; enterprises ; business cycles

Growth Accounting with Physical and Human Capital Accumulation

Benhabib, Jess, Spiegel, Mark M.

Production functions ; income ; production factors ; investments ; capital-output ratio

Indeterminacy and Sector-Specific Externalities

Benhabib, Jess, Farmer, Roger E.A.

Indeterminacy, sector-specific externalities, real business cycle model, returns to scale

On Growth and Indeterminacy: Some Theory and Evidence

Benhabib, Jess, Gali, Jordi

Multiple equilibria, indeterminacy, growth models, convergence

Indeterminancy and Sunspots with Constant Returns

Benhabib, Jess, Nishimura, Kazuo

We show that indeterminacy can easily arise in multi-sector models that have constant variable returns to scale and very small market imperfections. This is in sharp contrast to models that require...

Persistence of Business Cycles in Multisector RBC Models.

Benhabib, Jess, Perli, Roberto, Sakellaris, Plutarchos

In this paper we explore whether the changing composition of output in response to technology shocks can play a significant role in the propagation of shocks over time. For this purpose we study two...

Cross-Country Growth Regressions.

Benhabib, Jess, Spiegel, Mark

A large literature has identified a variety of "ancillary variables", such as political instability, income distribution, and financial development as important determinants of income growth in...

The Perils of Taylor Rules

Benhabib, Jess, Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie, Uribe, Martin

interest rate feedback rules; zero bound on nominal rates; liquidity traps; multiple equilibria

Indeterminacy, Aggregate Demand, and the Real Business Cycle

Benhabib, Jess, Wen, Yi

We show that under indeterminacy aggregate demand shocks are able to explain not only aspects of actual °uctuations that standard RBC models predict fairly well, but also aspects of actual...

Age, Luck, and Inheritance

Jess Benhabib, Shenghao Zhu

We present a mechanism to analytically generate a double Pareto distribution of wealth in a continuous time OLG model with optimizing agents who have bequest motives, are subject to stochastic...

Homework in Macoreconomics I: Basic Theory (Part I of II)

Jess Benhabib, Randall Wright, Richard Rogerson

This paper argues that the home, or nonmarket, sector is empirically large, whether measured in terms of the time devoted to household production activities or in terms of the value of home produced...

Homework in Macroeconomics: Household Production and Aggregate Fluctuations.

Benhabib, Jess, Rogerson, Richard, Wright, Randall

This paper explores some macroeconomic implications of including household production in an otherwise standard real business cycle model. The authors calibrate the model on the basis of microeconomic...

Backward-Looking Interest-Rate Rules, Interest-Rate Smoothing, and Macroeconomic Instability

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

The existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest-rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation. Such rules have been found to...

Chaotic Interest Rate Rules

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

A growing empirical and theoretical literature argues in favor of specifying monetary policy in the form of Taylor-type interest rate feedback rules. That is, rules whereby the nominal interest rate...

Monetary Policy and Multiple Equilibria

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

In this paper, we characterize conditions under which interest rate feedback rules that set the nominal interest rate as an increasing function of the inflation rate induce aggregate instability by...

The perils of Taylor Rules

Jess Benhabib, Stephanie Schmitt-Grohe, Martin Uribe

Since John Taylor's (1993) seminal paper, a large literature has argued that active interest rate feedback rules, that is, rules that respond to increases in inflation with a more than one-for-one...

The distribution of wealth and fiscal policy in economies with finitely lived agents

Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin

We study the dynamics of the distribution of overlapping generation economy with finitely lived agents and inter-generational transmission of wealth. Financial markets are incomplete, exposing agents...

A Note on Regime Switching, Monetary Policy, and Multiple Equilibria

Jess Benhabib

When monetary policy is subject to regime switches conditions for determinacy become more complex. Davig and Leeper (2007) and Farmer, Waggoner and Zha (2009a) have studied such conditons. Using some...

Moderate Inflation and the Deflation-Depression Link

JESS BENHABIB, MARK M. SPIEGEL

Recent research has concluded that the historical evidence only provides weak support for the contention that deflation episodes are harmful to economic growth. In this paper, we revisit this...