Accurate prediction of the frequency of extreme events is of primary importance in many financialapplications such as Value-at-Risk (VaR) analysis. We propose a semi-parametric method for VaRevaluation. The largest risks are modelled parametrically, while smaller risks are captured by the...

This paper examines the role of uncertainty shocks in a one-sector, representative-agent dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model. When prices are flexible, uncertainty shocks are not capable of producing business-cycle comovements among key macro variables. With countercyclical markups...

In this paper we investigate whether the dynamic properties of the U.S. business cycle have changed in the last fifty years. For this purpose we develop a flexible business cycle indicator that is constructed from a moderate set of macroeconomic time series. The coincident economic indicator is...

In this paper, we present a directed search model of the housing market. The pricing mechanism we analyze reflects the way houses are bought and sold in the United States. Our model is consistent with the observation that houses are sometimes sold above, sometimes below and sometimes at the...

In this paper we derive a structural measure for labor market density based on the Ellison and Glasear (1997) "Index for industry concentration". This labor market density measure serves as a proxy for the number of workers that can reach a certain work area within a reasonal amount of traveling...