This paper studies how investment and production in an economy is allocated across sectors when they face asymmetric financial conditions. Namely, when investors in one sector may run projects with higher loan-to-values than in another sector. Investors decide where to invest based on total...

Many have argued that the Great Recession of 2008 marked the end of the Great Moderation of the eighties and nineties. Through painstaking empirical analysis of the data, this paper shows this is not the case. Output volatility remains subdued despite the turmoil created by the Great Recession....

This paper investigates the identification and dating of the European business cycle, using different methods. We concentrate on methods and statistical series that provides timely and accurate information about the contemporaneous state of the economy in order to provide the reader with a...

The co-movements of labor productivity with output, total hours, vacancies and unemployment have changed since the mid 1980s. This paper offers an explanation for the sharp break in the fl uctuations of labor market variables based on endogenous labor supply decisions following the mortgage...

In a search and matching environment, this paper assesses a range of modeling setups against macro evidence for the monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area. In particular, we assess right-to-manage vs. efficient bargaining, flexible vs. sticky wages, interactions at the firm level...

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991-2010. Under this theory, productivity-enhancing activities, such as R&D investment, should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost – in terms of forgone output –....

We analyze the dynamic interactions between commodity prices and output growth of the seven biggest Latin American exporters: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Using a novel defi nition of Markovswitching impulse response functions, we fi nd that the response of...

To identify credit availability we analyze the extensive and intensive margins of lending with loan applications and all loans granted in Spain. We find that during the period analyzed both worse economic and tighter monetary conditions reduce loan granting, especially to firms or from banks...