This paper develops a theory of expectations-driven business cycles based on learning. Agents have incomplete knowledge about how market prices are determined and shifts in expectations of future prices affect dynamics. Learning breaks the tight link between fundamentals and equilibrium prices,...

This paper uses the consumption Euler equation to derive a decomposition of consumption growth into four sources. These four sources are new information, and three sources of predictable consumption growth: intertemporal substitution, changes in the preferences for consumption, and incomplete...

We estimate a state-of-the-art DSGE model to study the natural rate of interest in the United States over the last 20 years. The natural rate is highly procyclical, and fell substantially below zero in each of the last three recessions. Although the drop was of comparable magnitude across the...

We investigate the sources of the important shifts in the volatility of US macroeconomic variables in the postwar period. To this end, we propose the estimation of DSGE models allowing for time variation in the volatility of the structural innovations. We apply our estimation strategy to a...