General Equilibrium, Overlapping Generations Models, and Optimal Growth Theory


Book Description

This book presents an original exposition of general equilibrium theory for advanced undergraduate and graduate-level students of economics. It contains detailed discussions of economic efficiency, competitive equilibrium, the first and second welfare theorems, the Kuhn-Tucker approach to general equilibrium, the Arrow-Debreu model, and rational expectations equilibrium and the permanent income hypothesis. Truman Bewley also treats optimal growth and overlapping generations models as special cases of the general equilibrium model. He uses the model and the first and second welfare theorems to explain the main ideas of insurance, capital theory, growth theory, and social security. It enables him to present a unified approach to portions of macro- as well as microeconomic theory. The book contains problems sets for most chapters.




Introduction to Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory


Book Description

Economies are constantly in flux, and economists have long sought reliable means of analyzing their dynamic properties. This book provides a succinct and accessible exposition of modern dynamic (or intertemporal) macroeconomics. The authors use a microeconomics-based general equilibrium framework, specifically the overlapping generations model, which assumes that in every period there are two generations which overlap. This model allows the authors to fully describe economies over time and to employ traditional welfare analysis to judge the effects of various policies. By choosing to keep the mathematical level simple and to use the same modeling framework throughout, the authors are able to address many subtle economic issues. They analyze savings, social security systems, the determination of interest rates and asset prices for different types of assets, Ricardian equivalence, business cycles, chaos theory, investment, growth, and a variety of monetary phenomena. Introduction to Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory will become a classic of economic exposition and a standard teaching and reference tool for intertemporal macroeconomics and the overlapping generations model. The writing is exceptionally clear. Each result is illustrated with analytical derivations, graphically, and by worked out examples. Exercises, which are strategically placed, are an integral part of the book.




A Theory of Economic Growth


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth treatment of the overlapping generations model in economics incorporating production.




A Solutions Manual for General Equilibrium, Overlapping Generations Models, and Optimal Growth Theory


Book Description

The Solutions Manual contains answers to problems in General Equilibrium, Overlapping Generations Models, and Optimal Growth Theory. Truman F. Bewley's book--a cornerstone of microeconomics, general equilibrium theory, and mathematical economics courses--covers the main premises behind insurance, capital theory, growth theory, and social security.




Growth and International Trade


Book Description

Revised and updated for the 2nd edition, this textbook guides the reader towards various aspects of growth and international trade in a Diamond-type overlapping generations framework. Using the same model type throughout the book, timely topics such as growth with bubbles, robots and involuntary unemployment, financial integration and house price dynamics, policies to mitigate climate change and the persistence of religion in a globalized market economy are explored. The first part starts from the “old” growth theory and bridges to the “new” growth theory (including R&D and human capital approaches). The second part presents an intertemporal equilibrium theory of inter- and intra-sectoral trade, investigates innovation, growth and trade and limits to public debt as well as nationally and internationally optimal climate policies. The debt dynamics of the Euro Zone and the origins of intra-EMU and Asian-US trade imbalances are also explored. The book is primarily addressed to upper undergraduate and graduate students wishing to proceed to the analytically more demanding journal literature.




Full Circles Overlapping Lives


Book Description

The author of the best-selling Composing a Life offers her own revolutionary take on the role of longer life spans and recent lifestyle changes in reshaping individual identity and self-fulfillment. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.




Overlapping Generations


Book Description

The 800 pound gorilla in the room of macroeconomics is the question of why the overlapping generations model didn’t become the central workhorse model for macroeconomics, as opposed to the neoclassical growth model. The authors here explore the co-evolution of the two models.




On Overlapping Generations Models with Productive Capital


Book Description

This book was born out of a five-years research at Sonderforschungsbe reich 303 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitiit Bonn and was approved as my doctoral thesis by the Rechts-und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultiit in December 1994. It was my former colleague Wolfgang Peters who had drawn my atten tion to overlapping-generations models and to problems of intergenerational efficiency and distribution. The subtle connection between the latter two has been fascinating me from the very beginning: redistribution of the results of free trade can become necessary from the point of view of efficiency, although no externalities hamper the development of an economy. In spite of being a matured part of economics, neoclassical growth theory had left many questions unsolved, some of them even unrecognized by a large part of our profession. I took up the challenge to contribute to the investigation of some of these thorny problems. One of these issues is the often quoted idea of the inter generational con tract. Although intergenerational transfers can improve intertemporal effi ciency, the design of pension schemes to achieve an improvement of well-being of some generations without hurting that of any other, is not an easy task in an economy with flexible prices. Quite frequently, only interest rate and growth rate are taken into account when deciding on whether a generation wins or looses.




Public Finance in an Overlapping Generations Economy


Book Description

This book presents a theoretically-based comprehensive analysis of macroeconomic consequences of fiscal policy using a popular economic model: the overlapping generations growth model. A wide range of essential public finance issues is analyzed, including the effects of tax reform on dynamic efficiency, positive and normative effects of public spending, considerations of taxes on fixed assets and monetary holdings, and sustainability of deficits. A unique approach is applied in the study of public finance: one expected to generate substantial interest among current graduate students and active researchers.




Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling


Book Description

In this collection of 17 articles, top scholars synthesize and analyze scholarship on this widely used tool of policy analysis, setting forth its accomplishments, difficulties, and means of implementation. Though CGE modeling does not play a prominent role in top US graduate schools, it is employed universally in the development of economic policy. This collection is particularly important because it presents a history of modeling applications and examines competing points of view. - Presents coherent summaries of CGE theories that inform major model types - Covers the construction of CGE databases, model solving, and computer-assisted interpretation of results - Shows how CGE modeling has made a contribution to economic policy