This paper entertains the notion that disturbances on the demand side play a central role in our understanding of the Great Depression. In fact, from Euler equation residuals we are able to identify a series of unusually large negative demand shocks that appeared to have hit the U. S. economy...

On the basis of a real high stakes insurance experiment with small probabilities of losses, we demonstrate that concern is a more important driver of WTP for insurance than subjective probability estimates when there is ambiguity surrounding the estimate. Concern is still important when...

Alternative modeling strategies for specifying subset VAR models are considered. It is shown that under certain conditions a testing procedure based on t-ratios is equivalent to sequentially eliminating lags that lead to the largest improvement in a prespecified model selection criterion. A...

We propose two nonparametric transition density-based speciÞcation tests for continuous-time diffusion models. In contrast to marginal density as used in the literature, transition density can capture the full dynamics of a diffusion process, and in particular, can distinguish processes with...

In this paper we analyze the sources of German unemployment within a structural vector error correction model (SVECM) framework. For this purpose, we propose a method to estimate an exactly identified Subset SVECM, which is a SVECM with short run parameter restrictions. A cointegration analysis...

In 2001, the Fed has lowered interest rates in a series of cuts, starting from 6.5 % at the end of 2000 to 2.0 % by early November. This paper asks, whether the Federal Reserve Bank has been surprising the markets, taking as given the conventional view about the effect of monetary policy shocks....

In this paper a two-sector growth model allowing indeterminacy to occur at relatively mild degrees of increasing returns is developed. It is shown that these economies of scale need only be present in one sector of the economy (investment). This feature of the model, therefore, builds on...