Since the 2008 global financial crisis, and after decades of relative neglect, the importance of the financial system and its episodic crises as drivers of macroeconomic outcomes has attracted fresh scrutiny from academics, policy makers, and practitioners. Theoretical advances are following a...

In this paper we estimate a New-Keynesian DSGE model with heterogeneity in price and wage setting behavior. In a recent study, Coibion and Gorodnichenko (2011) develop a DSGE model, in which firms follow four different types of price setting schemes: sticky prices, sticky information, rule of...

One of the central questions in recent macroeconomic history is to what extent monetary policy as opposed to oil price shocks contributed to the stagflation of the 1970s. Understanding what went wrong in the 1970s is the key to learning from the past. One explanation explored in Barsky and...

We show that deviations from long-run stability of product prices are optimal in the presence of endogenous producer entry and product variety in a sticky-price model with monopolistic competition in which price stability would be optimal in the absence of entry. Specifically, a long-run...

This paper argues that limited asset market participation is crucial in explaining U.S. macroeconomic performance and monetary policy before the 1980s, and their changes thereafter. We develop an otherwise standard sticky-price DSGE model, whereby at low enough asset market participation,...

This paper presents a theory of the monetary transmission mechanism in a monetary version of Farmer’s (2009) model in which there are multiple equilibrium unemployment rates. The model has two equations in common with the new-Keynesian model; the optimizing IS curve and the policy rule. It...

Since Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997), a common view in the literature has been that systematic monetary policy responses to the inflation triggered by oil price shocks are an important source of aggregate fluctuations in the U.S. economy. We show that there is no evidence of systematic...

Using a newly developed measure of global real economic activity, a structural decomposition of the real price of crude oil in four components is proposed: oil supply shocks driven by political events in OPEC countries; other oil supply shocks; aggregate shocks to the demand for industrial...

This 2003 Institute for Fiscal Studies Lecture addresses two sets of issues relevant to current and prospective future E(M)U members: the consequences of the Stability and Growth Pact for fiscal-financial sustainability and macroeconomic stability, and some risks associated with operational...

This paper investigates the basic stylized facts of business cycles in the G7 countries using quarterly data from 1960-89. The methodology used is based on Kydland and Prescott (1990). The evidence suggests that the real business cycles model can account for several important stylized facts for...