We investigate the similarities of macroeconomicfluctuations in the Mediterranean basin and their convergence. A model with three geo-political indicators, covering the West, the East and the MENA portions of the Mediterranean, characterizes well the historical experience since the early 1980....

The newsworthiness of an event is partly determined by how unusual it is and this paper investigates the business cycle implications of this fact. In particular, we analyze the consequences of information structures in which some types of signals are more likely to be observed after unusual...

We examine the relationship between institutions, culture and cyclical fluctuations for a sample of 45 European, Middle Eastern and North African countries. Better governance is associated with shorter and less severe contractions and milder expansions. Certain cultural traits, such as lack of...

We study the effect of the cycle on the health of newborn babies using 30 years of birth-certificate data for Spain. We find that babies are born healthier when the local unemployment rate is high. Although fertility is lower during recessions, the effect on health is not the result of...

The present paper describes recent research on two central themes of Keynes' General Theory: (i) the social waste associated with recessions, and (ii) the effectiveness of fiscal policy as a stabilization tool. The paper also discusses some evidence on the extent to which fiscal policy has been...

We study whether labor market institutions affect the volatility and correlations of macroeconomic variables for a sample of 20 OECD countries. Labor market rigidities are characterized with a number of indicators; volatilities and correlations are computed in several ways. Union coverage and...

This paper studies the macroeconomic implications of firmsprecautionary investment behavior in response to the anticipation of future financing constraints. Firms increase their demand for liquid and safe investments in order to alleviate future borrowing constraints and decrease the probability...

Many empirical studies have applied the Hodrick-Prescott fllter in cross- country comparisons of business cycle fluctuations. The Hodrick-Prescott filter involves the smoothing parameter, and standard practise in the literature is to set this parameter equal to 1600 (in quarterly data) for all...

We study the contribution of money to business cycle fluctuations in the US, the UK, Japan, and the Euro area using a small scale structural monetary business cycle model. Constrained likelihood-based estimates of the parameters are provided and time instabilities analyzed. Real balances are...

We propose a method to estimate time in variant cyclical DSGE models using the information provided by a variety of filters. We treat data filtered with alternative procedures as contaminated proxies of the relevant model-based quantities and estimate structural and non-structural parameters...