Business cycle properties under different monetary policy rules are examined in a variety of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (the real business cycle models, the nominal wage contract models with different length of contracts, and the monopolistic competition models with different...

The paper contains some implications for applied econometric research. Two important ones are, first, that invertible models, such as AR or VAR models, cannot in general be used to model seasonally adjusted or detrended data. The second one is that to look at the business cycle in detrended...

Hodrick-Prescott (HP) Filter of (most often, seasonally adjusted) quaterly series is analysed. Some of the criticism to the filter are adressed. It is seen that, while filtering strongly affects autocorrelations, it has little effect on crosscorrelations. It is argued that the criticism that HP...

This paper studies the relationship between Spanish real aggregate fluctuations and those of its Europe neighbors in the last decades. It studies the ability of alternative International Real Business Cycle models (based on Backus, Kehoe and Kydland (1994) with different degrees of international...

Taking into account two salient Spanish stylized facts, namely, a persistent disinflationary process and hysteresis in the unemployment, this paper tries to answer the following question: Is a nominal permanent disinflation compatible with short-run unemployment costs but also with long-run...

In this monograph, first, we analyze in detail some of the major limitations of the standard procedure to estimate business cycles with the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter. By incorporating time series analysis techniques, it is seen how some intuitive and relatively simple modifications to the...

The liquidity effect, defined as a decrease in nominal interest rates in response to a monetary expansion, is a major stylized fact of the business cycle. This paper seeks to understand under what conditions such an effect can be explained in a general equilibrium model with sticky prices and...

This document contains the text of the 1998 Central Banking Lecture delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science on June 4th. It starts by asking what factors have been behind the remarkable retreat of inflation that has taken place internationally since the mid-eighties,...

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Spain suffered high rates of inflation but inflation declined and by 1997 inflation had fallen to approximately 2 percent. To fight inflation, Spain implemented austere monetary programs, joined the EMS in 1989, enacted central bank autonomy in 1994, and...