We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost-minimization and measure each firm's liquidity shortfall during and after...

Using a new survey of European households, we study how exogenous variation in the macroeconomic uncertainty perceived by households affects their spending decisions. We use randomized information treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of...

We use micro data from the European Social Survey to investigate the impact of "culture of leisure" and taxes on labor force participation and hours worked of second-generation immigrants who reside in 26 European countries. These individuals are born in Europe, and they have been exposed to...

Over the U.S. business cycle, fluctuations in residential investment are well known to systematically lead GDP. These dynamics are documented here to be specific to the U.S. and Canada. In other developed economies residential investment is broadly coincident with GDP. Nonresidential investment...

This paper uses a rich new data set of option prices on the dollar-mark, dollar-yen, and key EMS cross-rates to extract the entire risk-neutral probability density function (pdf) over horizons of one and three months. We compare three alternative smoothing methods---cubic splines, an implied...

The paper characterizes predictable components in excess rates of returns on major equity and foreign exchange markets using lagged excess returns, dividend yields, and forward premiums as instruments. Vector autoregressive techniques demonstrate one-step-ahead predictability and provide implied...

Using a simple case study approach. this paper compares the conduct and performance of monetary policy in six Industrialized countries since the breakup of the Bretton Woods system. Our purpose is to develop fruitful hypotheses that might usefully be explored in subsequent, more formal research....

Central banks have evolved for close to four centuries. This paper argues that for two centuries central banks caught up to the strategies followed by the leading central banks of the era; the Bank of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the Federal Reserve in the twentieth...