We assess the contribution of "undue optimism" (Pigou) to short-run fluctuations. In our analysis, optimism pertains to total factor productivity which determines economic activity in the long run, but is not contemporaneously observed by market participants. In order to recover optimism shocks...

We make use of a bootstrap panel analysis of causality between energy use and economic growth for a sample of sixteen African countries over the period 1988-2010. Our results show that growth and energy use are strongly linked in Africa. However, African countries are heterogeneous and there is...

Mainstream economic research regards private debt as a determinant of GDP growth in the longrun. Levine (2005) surveys in details this branch of literature and explains the channels by which debt fuels growth. In this paper we switch the focus from the long to the short-run and study whether...

This paper investigates static and dynamic connectedness between the first and second moments of fossil and renewable energy stock indices in the last decade at the daily frequency. For this purpose the Diebold and Yilmaz (2014) methodology is applied; in addition, endogenous break tests are...