This paper estimates a New Keynesian model to investigate to what extent labour market reforms undertaken by the Thatcher government in the late 1930s and the introduction of a constant inflation target in 1992 might have changed the UK economic outlook if they had been introduced in the early...

This paper embeds labor market search frictions into a New Keynesian model with financial frictions as in Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999).  The econometric estimation establishes that labor market frictions substantially improve the empirical fit of the model.  The effect of the...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption.  This paper exploits liquid and illiquid wealth time series from household balance sheet data for South Africa, previously constructed by the authors, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of...

In countries with credible inflation targeting, it seems plausible to suggest that instead of forming a rational expectation, some firms (inflation-targeters) might simply expect future inflation to always equal its target. This paper analyses the implications of this for optimal monetary policy...

This paper incorporates limited asset markets participation in dynamic general equilibrium and develops a simple analytical framework for monetary policy analysis. Aggregate dynamics and stability properties of an otherwise standard business cycle model depend nonlinearly on the degree of asset...

The controversy over Ricardo`s corn model has focussed on the interpretation of his early writings. Here Ricardo`s later use of a corn model example in his dispute with Malthus over gluts is discussed. Malthus`s own extensive use of a corn model in attempting to justify his use of a labour...

This paper uses a VAR model estimated with Bayesian methods to identify the effect of productivity news shocks on labor market variables by imposing that they are orthogonal to current technology but they explain future observed technology.  In the aftermath of a positive news shock,...

This paper studies how key labor market stylized facts and the responses of labor market variables to technology shocks vary over the US postwar period.  It uses a benchmark DSGE model enriched with labor market frictions and investment specific technological progress that enables a novel...

After the global financial crisis, there is greater awareness of the need to understand the interactions between the financial sector and the real economy and hence the potential for financial instability.  Data from the financial flow of funds, previously relatively neglected, are now seen as...

We consider whether oil prices can account for business cycle asymmetries. We test for asymmetries based on the Markov switching autoregressive model popularized by Hamilton (1989), using the tests devised by Clements and Krolzig (2000). We select the transformation of the oil price of Lee, Ni...