Housing prices diverge from construction prices after 1997 in four major countries. Besides, TFP differences between construction and the general economy account for the evolution of construction prices in the U.S. and Germany, but not in the U.K. and Spain.

This paper seeks to estimate the potential output of the Spanish economy, using the production function methodology standard in the literature. According to these estimates, the growth of the potential output of the Spanish economy stood at around 3% in the period 2000-2007, owing to the marked...

This paper estimates the steady state mark-ups of 23 branches of activity in seven developed countries (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain). The empirical methodology departs from the Hall (1988) seminal approach and incorporates the possibility of non-competitive labour markets....

This paper offers an evaluation of the output contribution of infrastructure. Drawing from a large data set of infrastructure stocks covering 88 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000, and using a panel time-series approach, the paper estimates a long-run aggregate production function...

Modern DSGE models are microfounded and have deep parameters that should be invariant to changes in economic policy, so in principle they are not subject to the Lucas critique. But the literature has already established that misspecification issues also cause parameter instability after policy...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...

In this paper we propose a new real-time forecasting model for euro area GDP growth, D€STINY, which attempts to bridge the existing gap in the literature between large- and small-scale dynamic factor models. By adopting a disaggregated modelling approach, D€STINY uses most of the information...

We study simple fiscal rules for stabilizing the government debt level in response to asymmetric demand shocks in a country that belongs to a currency union. We compare debt stabilization through tax rate adjustments with debt stabilization through expenditure changes. While rapid and flexible...

Much has been written about why economists failed to predict the latest financial and real crisis. Reading the recent literature, it seems that the crisis was so obvious that economists must have been blind when looking at data not to see it coming. In this paper, we analyze whether such claims...

Practitioners do not always use research findings, as the research is not always conducted in a manner relevant to real-world practice. This survey seeks to close the gap between research and practice in respect of short-term forecasting in real time. To this end, we review the most relevant...