Advanced Topics in Macroeconomics
PhD topics, University of Melbourne, 2014
This is a second year graduate course in macroeconomics. The focus is on the aggregate implications of quantitative models of producer heterogeneity, with applications to firm dynamics, innovation and aggregate growth, cross-country income differences, and international trade.
Lecture 1 Introduction and
course overview. Motivating facts about the firm size distribution and
firm dynamics.
Lecture 2 Hopenhayn’s industry
equilibrium model with entry and exit (firm turnover) but stationary
firm distribution.
Lecture 3 Solving the Hopenhayn
model, further computational details and practicalities.
Lecture 4 Hopenhayn/Rogerson,
implications of nonconvex adjustment costs for aggregate productivity
and turnover.
Lecture 5 Quality ladders and
growth via creative destruction, review of some continuous time
tools.
Lecture 6 Klette/Kortum,
quality-ladder model of growth via creative destruction with firm
dynamics.
Lecture 7 Lentz/Mortensen,
fundamental heterogeneity in Klette/Kortum, selection and structural
estimation.
Lecture 8 Atkeson/Kehoe,
diffusion of new technologies following increase in rate of embodied
technical change.
Lecture 9 Restuccia/Rogerson,
aggregate productivity and welfare consequences of idiosyncratic
distortions.
Lecture 10 Hsieh/Klenow,
evidence on the importance of misallocation, implications for
cross-country income differences.
Lecture 11 Peters,
microfoundations for misallocation in a quality ladder model.
Lecture 12 Buera/Shin,
financial frictions and misallocation, sluggish transitional dynamics
following a reduction in misallocation.
Lecture 13 Krugman,
monopolistic competition, scale economies and trade.
Lecture 14 Melitz,
monopolistic competition, firm heterogeneity and trade.
Lecture 15 Chaney, asymmetric
countries, intensive and extensive margins of trade, gravity
equations.
Lecture 16 Eaton/Kortum,
Ricardian models with many asymmetric countries, implications for trade
flows.
Lecture 17
Arkolakis/Costinot/Rodriguez-Clare, gains from trade in standard
quantitative trade models.
Lecture 18
Arkolakis/Costinot/Donaldson/Rodriguez-Clare, elusive pro-competitive
effects of trade in monopolistic competition models with non-CES
demand.
Lecture 19 Edmond/Midrigan/Xu,
pro-competitive effects of trade with oligopolistic competition,
implications for misallocation, importance of head-to-head
competition.