Emanuela Cardia

Université de Montréal | UdeM · Department of Economics

Raising children takes considerable time, particularly for women. Yet, the role of childcare time has received scant attention in the macroeconomics literature. We develop a life-cycle model in which the time dimension of childcare plays a central role. An important contribution of the paper is estimation of the parameters of a childcare production...

WWII mobilization led to a permanent increase in female employment. Using Census micro data we study the effects of this increase on the occupations women held after the war. Almost three decades after its end, WWII had lasting effects on the occupational landscape. For women of working age in the early 1940s, the war caused a permanent shift towar...

Throughout the 20th century home production was revolutionized by the introduction of new technologies, from running water to modern appliances, that significantly reduced the time de-mands of home production. This paper examines whether these changes can explain the important increase in the labor force participation of married women during the 20t...

Recent empirical evidence from vector autoregressions suggesting that public spending shocks crowd in private consumption has been judged para-doxical in the light of neoclassical models of the business cycle. We show that a standard real business cycle model in all agents including the govern-ment optimize is compatible with crowding in. The model...

production. This paper examines whether these changes can explain the important increase in the labor force participation of married women during the 20th century. It contributes to the existing literature by including childcare constraints consistent with U.S. time use data, to examine whether the durable good revolution can also explain the histo...

This article constructs and estimates a sticky-price, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model with heterogeneous production sectors. Firms in different sectors vary in their price rigidity, production technology, and the combination of material and investment inputs. In particular, firms buy inputs from all sectors using the actual Input–Outpu...

In this paper, we study the macroeconomic implications of sectoral heterogeneity and, in particular, heterogeneity in price setting, through the lens of a highly disaggregated multi-sector model. The model incorporates several realistic features and is estimated using a mix of aggregate and sectoral U.S. data. The frequencies of price changes impli...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

Durable goods pose a challenge for standard sticky-price models because the near constancy of their shadow value and their apparent price flexibility lead to perverse and counterfactual economic implications, such as the tendency of the durables and nondurables sectors to move in opposite directions following a monetary policy shock. This paper int...

Recent empirical evidence from vector autoregressions (VARs) suggests that public spending shocks increase (crowd in) private consumption. Standard general equilibrium models predict the opposite. We show that a standard real business cycle (RBC) model in which public spending is chosen optimally can rationalize the crowding-in effect documented in...

This paper studies the persistent effects of monetary shocks on output. Previous empirical literature documents this persistence, but standard general equilibrium models with sticky prices fail to generate output responses beyond the duration of nominal contracts. This paper constructs and estimates a general equilibrium model with price rigidities...

This paper examines the role of housing decisions on business cycles fluctuations. We use an overlapping generation model where to acquire a house whose services are an argument in the utility function households have to save for a down payment and make a long term financial committment. Because of the indivisibility of housing, households buy "too...

This paper analyzes the relationship between banks’ divergent strategies toward specialization and diversification of financial activities and their ability to withstand a banking sector crash. We first generate market-based measures of banks’ systemic risk exposures using extreme value analysis. Systemic banking risk is measured as the tail be...

This paper uses a standard two-period overlapping generation model to examine the behavior of an economy where both intergenerational transfers of time and bequests are available. While bequests have been examined extensively, time transfers have received little or no attention in the literature. Assuming a log-linear utility function and a Cobb–Do...

Modern business cycle theory involves developing models that explain stylized facts. For this strategy to be successful, these facts should be well established. In this paper, we focus on the stylized facts of international business cycles. We use the generalized method of moments and quarterly data from twenty industrialized countries to estimate...

Although intergenerational transfers of time in the form of grandparenting are substantial, little is known about their role and importance. In this paper, we calibrate an overlapping generations model extended to allow for both time and monetary transfers to the US economy. We use simulations to show that time transfers have important positive eff...

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using data from Canada, United States, Germany, and Japan. In all these countries, labor-tax changes are found to be persistent and to have played an impor...

Standard multi-country models do not replicate important features of the international transmission of business cycles, predicting cross-country correlations of output and consumption which are, respectively, too low and too high. In this paper we modify the supply side of a two-country model by adding multiple sectors and trade in intermediate goo...

This paper examines the implications of intergenerational transfers of time and money for labor supply and capital accumulation. Although intergenerational transfers of time in the form of grandparenting are as substantial as monetary transfers in the data, little is known about the role and importance of time transfers. In this paper, we calibrate...

Modern Business cycle theory involves developing models that explain stylized facts. For this strategy to be success, these facts should be we established. In this paper, we focus on the stylized facts of international business cycles.

: In this paper, we introduce a dynamic general equilibrium model with numerous and heterogeneous investment projects and endogenous occupational choice to study a credit crunch. The investment decision is determined through the occupational choice of households which is driven by the endogenous accumulation of assets as they face various employmen...

In this paper we examine the impact of membership in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) on trade between PTA members. Rather than considering the impact of PTA membership on the volume of trade we consider the impact of membership on the structure of trade. For a large sample of countries over the period 1962-2000 we find that membership in a PTA...

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using Canadian data between 1966 and 1993. While the cointegrating predictions of the model without taxation are rejected, the ones of the model with labor...

Multi-country models have not been very successful in replicating important features of the international transmission of business cycles. This paper extends previous work by introducing multiple sectors and traded intermediate inputs. Trade in intermediate goods represents approximately 60% of total trade and could significantly affect the main fe...

The authors build a dynamic model of the business cycle with monopolistically competitive firms. With simple assumptions concerning firm entry and exit, the model can explain some stylized facts of the business cycle that standard real business cycle models cannot predict. They include the cyclical behavior of the shares of capital and labor income...

This paper replicates standard consumption function tests of Ricardian equivalence using series generated from a model which nests Ricardian equivalence within a non-Ricardian alternative (due to finite horizons and/or distortionary taxation). The author shows that the estimates of the effects of taxation on consumption are not robust and that stan...

We build a model of optimal time-consistent public spending in a dynamic general equilibrium model of the business cycle. We analyze the welfare properties of optimal public spending and characterize the optimal response of spending to exogenous economic shocks.

We build a model of optimal time-consistent public spending in a dynamic general equilibrium model of the business cycle. We analyze the welfare properties of optimal public spending and characterize the optimal response of spending to exogenous economic shocks. Nous analysons les dépenses publiques optimales et intertemporellement cohérentes dans...

This paper examines the quantitative effects of fiscal policy in a general equilibrium model modified to include nominal wage contracts. We show that the presence of even small amounts of nominal rigidities substantially increases the effects of fiscal policies on output.

RÉSUMÉ Nous présentons une version simple du modèle dynamique d’équilibre général de la transmission internationale du cycle économique. Nous analysons sa solution et ses prédictions, et nous comparons ses prédictions avec les faits observés des covariations internationales des agrégats macroéconomiques. Ensuite, nous présentons un survol d’article...

This paper examines the role of wage indexation and indexation lags in stabilization programs. We analyze whether the added inflation inertia caused by such lags increases the importance of the heterodox aspects of anti-inflation stabilization programs, which involve the imposition of direct wage and price controls. For this purpose, we build a mod...

It has recently been shown that industrialized countries in the 1970s and 1980s are characterized by a high correlation between national saving and investment. This regularly is considered.puzzling in the context of highly integrated international capital markets. In this paper, the author shows that both the failure of real interest parity and pro...

This paper evaluates empirically the relative importance of monetary and fiscal versus technology shocks in an open economy characterized by perfect international capital mobility. The variance-covariance matrix of these shocks is estimated. A stochastic model is used to perform numerical simulations. The results show that persistent shocks to prod...

RÉSUMÉ Nous analysons, calibrons et simulons un modèle des fluctuations économiques qui est très général et qui permet de réunir plusieurs approches modernes à la modélisation du cycle économique. Le modèle emboîte des hypothèses de croissance endogène, de concurrence monopolistique sur le marché des biens et services, et de rigidités nominales par...

The paper characterizes the optimal time-consistent anti-inflation program in a small, open, semi-industrialized economy when policy makers choose the rate of exchange rate crawl, the rate of change of fiscal spending and a wage and price control parameter to minimize deviations of output and inflation. The optimal program involves a rapidly decele...

Ce Papier Examine Si des Chocs de Productivite Peuvent Reproduire la Correlation Tres Elevee Entre L'investissement et L'epargne Nationale Que L'om Trouve, Pour les Paus Industrialises, Dans un Modele Avec la Mobilite Parfaite des Capitaux et Aussi En Presence D'autres Types de Chocs. L'economie Est Perturbee Par des Chocs de Productivite de Politi...

Home production has dramatically changed during the course of the 20th century and labor saving technologies, from running water to modern appliances, have freed considerable amount of time from home production. In an influential paper Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu (2005) examine the role of the household technology revolution in liberating wom...