The reduction of child mortality is one of the most universally accepted millennium goals. However, a significant debate came out on the means of reaching it and on its realism with regard to the situation of most of the least developed countries. The recommendations made for the achievement of...

In a first section, we shall discuss the main issues that divided Wicksell and Mises during a debate that took place between them in 1914. We will first analyze how the two authors conceived the link between the “commodity market” and the “money market” as well as their respective stance...

In this paper, we reconsider Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek's theories of business cycles in the light of their methodological approach. In the first part, we clarify Mises and Hayek's methodological frameworks in order to provide a better understanding of their programmatic approach of...

We use a French firm-level data set containing 13,000 firms over the period 1993-2004 to analyze the relationship between credit constraints and firms' R&D behavior over the business cycle. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) the share of R&D investment over total investment is...

To construct models and to apply quantitative techniques in order to explain the cyclical movements of the economy is one of the main aims of “X-Crise” group (nickname of “Centre Polytechnicien d'Etudes Economiques”) at the “Ecole Polytechnique” in Paris. Indeed, french...

This paper studies how income-based, progressive taxes and transfers may reduce aggregate volatility by protecting the economy against expectation-driven business cycles. Eliminating “local” sunspots that are arbitrarily close to an indeterminate steady state requires, for sensible parameter...

We study the implications of constant money growth rules on the stability properties of the equilibrium, in economies where the agents are subject to a partial cash-in-advance constraint applying simultaneously to consumption and investment purchases. By reference to similar models in which the...

We incorporate imperfectly insured unemployment in the finance constrained economy proposed by Woodford (1986), by introducing unions and unemployment benefits financed by labor taxation. We show that this simple extension of the Woodford model changes drastically its stability conditions and...

We provide a business cycle model in which endogenous markup fluctuations are the main driving force. These fluctuations occur due to some form of 'animal spirits', impelling firms in their entry-exit decisions within each sector. By contrast to existing models of the business cycle emphasizing...

This paper questions the impact of trade integration on business cycle sychronization in the EMU by distinguishing increase of existing trade flows (the intensive margin) and creation of new trade flows (the extensive margin). Using a DSGE model, we find that synchronization is weakened when new...