This paper studies the econometrics of computed dynamic models. Since these models generally lack a closed-form solution, economists approximate the policy functions of the agents in the model with numerical methods. But this implies that, instead of the exact likelihood function, the researcher...

The economic and financial development are examined in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, representing the Middle East and North Africa region. Lengthy bureaucratic procedures, unclear...

The recent political developments in the Middle East have prompted increased scrutiny of the economies of the nations lying in this region. Over the past few months, the financial markets of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been affected by the speculations that existed before the war in...

Spain has experienced many financial crises through its history. These financial crises have varied origins. However, they do have common threads. The current recession and subsequent debt crisis follow the same pattern. The fiscal and monetary policies of the Spanish government have played a...

This paper analyzes the causes and implications of recent financial crises. Financial crises in general lead to changes in both theory and practice of economics. The paper takes an historical overview. The global consensus of economic theory during the 20th century is discussed. The paper...

The economic history of the United States is riddled with financial crises and banking panics. During the nineteenth-century, eight major such episodes occurred. In the period following World War II, some believed that these crises would no longer happen, and that the U.S. had reached a time of...

This paper is a study of the shape and structure of the distribution of prices at which an identical good is sold in a given market and time period. We find that the typical price distribution is symmetric and leptokurtic, with a standard deviation between 19% and 36%. Only 10% of the variance...

Credit booms usually precede financial crises. However, some credit booms end in a crisis (bad booms) and other booms do not (good booms). We document that, while all booms start with an increase in the growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP), such growth falls much faster subsequently for bad...

The examination of U.S. crises reveals that the current financial crisis follows past patterns. An investment bubble creates excess demand for new financing instruments. During the railroad bubbles of the nineteenth century loans were issued at a pace higher than many companies could pay back....

This paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where firms are imperfectly informed. We estimate the model through likelihood-based methods and find that it can explain the highly persistent real effects of monetary disturbances that are documented by a benchmark VAR. The...