Syllabus for 712, Jose Víctor Ríos Rull 
Topics in Quantitative Macroeconomics
Course Description
- This course should be thought of as a Macro/Labor course that should be of interest to people that care about both areas. Its main purpose is to link models and data i.e. to answer quantitative questions that we are interested in (in the process of doing so, some interesting theoretical questions arise). We will develop tools by stating general questions, and then discussing how to approach its answer.
Grading Rules and Registration
- Registered students should present once and answer a homework. Such homework will be writing code to replicate results or answer a question or something like that. I will propose various during the course. Students then talk to me about what they want to do. I expect that you should be able to do all things that I propose. The homework is due April 29, 2020 at NOON in my emailbox.
Possible Topics that are related to my work and we can talk about are
- Health Consumption and Inequality (how to estimate what health is)
- Banking Dynamics and Capital Regulation (Hopenhayn banks in general equilibrium )
- Organizational Equilibrium (What is a good theory of policy)
- The Generalized Euler Equation and the Bankruptcy–Sovereign Default Problem (How to characterize default Problems)
- A Theory of Credit Scoring and Competitive Pricing of Default Risk (how to think of types: another role for extreme value shocks)
- Life Insurance and Household Consumption (How to use choices to measure certain other things)
- Sticky Wages and Slavery in New Keynesian Models (how to avoid the problem that agents or firms can work against their will)
- Directed Search, Nominal Rigidities and Markup Cyclicality (How to get New Keynesian models to have procyclical markups)
- Living Arrangements and Labor market Volatility of Young workers (a model of cyclical movements on the number of households)
- A Theory of Low Interest Rates and Low Investment (how come despite low real interest rates there is no surge in investment)
- What can we learn from Seasonality (is there something in the seasonal patterns that tells us what are the sources of shocks?)
Possible papers to present are
- Leon-Ledesma and Satchi 2017
But you are free to present whatever you want.
Other Topics to discuss (not necessarily related to my work)
- Human Capital Investment models. This topic will involve a problem with two dimensional endogenous assets and investment. All should do (or be able to do) this. This problem should be posed recursively. I also ask for some people to look at how to solve the problem with two dimensions, assets and a continuous shock, and to propose innovative ways of solving it. A possible place to start is here.