Aggregate demand | EPFL Graph Search

In macroeconomics, aggregate demand (AD) or domestic final demand (DFD) is the total demand for final goods and services in an economy at a given time. It is often called effective demand, though at other times this term is distinguished. This is the demand for the gross domestic product of a country. It specifies the amount of goods and services that will be purchased at all possible price levels. Consumer spending, investment, corporate and government expenditure, and net exports make up the aggregate demand. The aggregate demand curve is plotted with real output on the horizontal axis and the price level on the vertical axis. While it is theorized to be downward sloping, the Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu results show that the slope of the curve cannot be mathematically derived from assumptions about individual rational behavior. Instead, the downward sloping aggregate demand curve is derived with the help of three macroeconomic assumptions about the functioning of markets: Pigou's we

Essays on Equilibrium Asset Pricing

Rodolfo Javier Prieto Katunaric

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter endogenizes technological change by introducing a stylized innovation process driven by a R&D–dependent Poisson process in a Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (1985) production economy. The model reproduces some of the features of the long-run risk literature, that is, endogenous consumption growth departs slightly from the i.i.d. framework, and shocks to realized and expected consumption growth are priced in equilibrium. Equilibrium dynamics suggest the use of general investment based measures, such as the R&D-to-capital ratio, to identify the long-run risk component in aggregate consumption growth. The second chapter examines the impact of risk-based portfolio constraints on asset prices in a standard exchange economy model where agents have different risk aversion. Constrained agents scale down their benchmark portfolio and behave locally like power utility investors with risk aversion that depends on current market conditions. The equilibrium is characterized using the consumption share of the constrained agents and allows for explicit existence results. The imposition of constraints on active market participants dampens fundamental shocks when they bind, a result that challenges recent studies that suggest that risk management rules serve to amplify aggregate fluctuations. The results also dispute the belief that capital regulations make financial crises larger and more costly, as constraints are more likely to bind in bad times. Constraints may give rise to equilibrium asset pricing bubbles, a result that is associated to the risk aversion distribution across agents and the severity of the constraint. The third chapter studies a pure exchange economy with three types of agents: constrained agents are subject to portfolio constraints, unconstrained agents are free to choose the composition of their portfolio and face a standard nonnegativity constraint on wealth, and arbitrageurs, who are unconstrained, and may incur in marked-to-market losses which are bounded by a state-dependent constraint. This credit condition is valuable when there are asset pricing bubbles, which arise endogenously because of the presence of constrained agents. The size of bubbles depends, primarily, on the ability of the arbitrageur to exploit the arbitrages available due to the mispriced assets, and hence, on the credit conditions. The bubble on the stock vanishes in the limit of infinite credit. Even though all agents have logarithmic utility, the stock price and volatility display the "leverage effect". The impact of the form of the wealth constraint on the results is also assessed.

EPFL2010

Imbalance and drivers of carbon emissions embodied in trade along the Belt and Road Initiative

Qinli Lu

A continuous growth of international trade, especially between developing countries, has greatly increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with energy consumption over the past two decades. Given the more intensified intraregional cooperation and trade within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this study aims to trace the imbalance of CO2 embodied in trade between nations in BRI and the rest of the world, providing new insights into the drivers of emissions growth by contrasting consumption, production and technological differences-based perspectives. Results indicate that the BRI contributed to over 50% of global carbon footprint and 92% of its increase in 1995-2015. The BRI was a net exporter of trade-embodied emissions, whose technological-adjusted carbon footprint remained remarkably large due to comparatively high carbon intensity. Geographically, carbon leakage has gradually moved from China and India to other BRI countries, especially to Southeast Asia, West Asia and Africa. Technological change was the key driver of emissions reduction, followed by the change in industrial structure. The growth in final demand per capita was the most important driver for the growth of CO2 emissions in BRI. Improving carbon efficiency remains a critical step for BRI nations to slow down not only emissions growth but also carbon leakage. The paper managed to provide novel insights into the carbon leakage in BRI by contrasting the consumption, production and technological differences-based perspectives, thus being able to better inform policymakers on region-specific low-carbon transition and global climate governance.

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2020

Risky Mortgages in a DSGE Model

Chiara Forlati, Luisa Lambertini

This paper develops a DSGE model with housing, risky mortgages, and endogenous default. Housing investment is subject to idiosyncratic risk, and some mortgages are defaulted in equilibrium. An unanticipated increase in the standard deviation of housing investment risk produces a credit crunch where delinquencies and mortgage interest rates increase, lending is curtailed, and aggregate demand for non-durable goods falls. The economy experiences a recession as a consequence of the credit crunch. The paper compares economies that differ only in the riskiness of housing investment. Economies with lower risk are characterized by lower steady-state mortgage default rates and higher loan-to-value and leverage ratios. The macroeconomic effects of an unanticipated increase in housing investment risk are amplified in high-leverage economies. Monetary policy plays an important role in the transmission of housing investment risk, as inertial interest rate rules generate deeper output contractions.

2011

Essays on Equilibrium Asset Pricing

Rodolfo Javier Prieto Katunaric

EPFL2010