arXiv subjects

Demian Pouzo

Publications and source records attributed to Demian Pouzo.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Equilibrium in Misspecified Markov Decision Processes

We study Markov decision problems where the agent does not know the transition probability function mapping current states and actions to future states. The agent has a prior belief over a set of possible transition functions and updates beliefs using Bayes' rule. We allow her to be misspecified in the sense that the true transition probability function is not in the support of her prior. This problem is relevant in many economic settings but is usually not amenable to analysis by the researcher. We make the problem tractable by studying asymptotic behavior. We propose an equilibrium notion and provide conditions under which it characterizes steady state behavior. In the special case where the problem is static, equilibrium coincides with the single-agent version of Berk-Nash equilibrium (Esponda and Pouzo (2016)). We also discuss subtle issues that arise exclusively in dynamic settings due to the possibility of a negative value of experimentation.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2016

Optimal Taxation with Endogenous Default under Incomplete Markets

In a dynamic economy, we characterize the fiscal policy of the government when it levies distortionary taxes and issues defaultable bonds to finance its stochastic expenditure. Default may occur in equilibrium as it prevents the government from incurring in future tax distortions that would come along with the service of the debt. Households anticipate the possibility of default generating endogenous credit limits. These limits hinder the government's ability to smooth taxes using debt, implying more volatile and less serially correlated fiscal policies, higher borrowing costs and lower levels of indebtedness. In order to exit temporary financial autarky following a default event, the government has to repay a random fraction of the defaulted debt. We show that the optimal fiscal and renegotiation policies have implications aligned with the data.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2015

Sovereign Default Risk and Uncertainty Premia

This paper studies how international investors' concerns about model misspecification affect sovereign bond spreads. We develop a general equilibrium model of sovereign debt with endogenous default wherein investors fear that the probability model of the underlying state of the borrowing economy is misspecified. Consequently, investors demand higher returns on their bond holdings to compensate for the default risk in the context of uncertainty. In contrast with the existing literature on sovereign default, we match the bond spreads dynamics observed in the data together with other business cycle features for Argentina, while preserving the default frequency at historical low levels.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2015

Bootstrap Consistency for Quadratic Forms of Sample Averages with Increasing Dimension

This paper establishes consistency of the weighted bootstrap for quadratic forms $\left( n^{-1/2} \sum_{i=1}^{n} Z_{i,n} \right)^{T}\left( n^{-1/2} \sum_{i=1}^{n} Z_{i,n} \right)$ where $(Z_{i,n})_{i=1}^{n}$ are mean zero, independent $\mathbb{R}^{d}$-valued random variables and $d=d(n)$ is allowed to grow with the sample size $n$, slower than $n^{1/4}$. The proof relies on an adaptation of Lindeberg interpolation technique whereby we simplify the original problem to a Gaussian approximation problem. We apply our bootstrap results to model-specification testing problems when the number of moments is allowed to grow with the sample size.

math.ST↗

arXiv2015

Sieve Wald and QLR Inferences on Semi/nonparametric Conditional Moment Models

This paper considers inference on functionals of semi/nonparametric conditional moment restrictions with possibly nonsmooth generalized residuals, which include all of the (nonlinear) nonparametric instrumental variables (IV) as special cases. These models are often ill-posed and hence it is difficult to verify whether a (possibly nonlinear) functional is root-$n$ estimable or not. We provide computationally simple, unified inference procedures that are asymptotically valid regardless of whether a functional is root-$n$ estimable or not. We establish the following new useful results: (1) the asymptotic normality of a plug-in penalized sieve minimum distance (PSMD) estimator of a (possibly nonlinear) functional; (2) the consistency of simple sieve variance estimators for the plug-in PSMD estimator, and hence the asymptotic chi-square distribution of the sieve Wald statistic; (3) the asymptotic chi-square distribution of an optimally weighted sieve quasi likelihood ratio (QLR) test under the null hypothesis; (4) the asymptotic tight distribution of a non-optimally weighted sieve QLR statistic under the null; (5) the consistency of generalized residual bootstrap sieve Wald and QLR tests; (6) local power properties of sieve Wald and QLR tests and of their bootstrap versions; (7) asymptotic properties of sieve Wald and SQLR for functionals of increasing dimension. Simulation studies and an empirical illustration of a nonparametric quantile IV regression are presented.

math.ST↗