We study whether labor market institutions affect the volatility and correlations of macroeconomic variables for a sample of 20 OECD countries. Labor market rigidities are characterized with a number of indicators; volatilities and correlations are computed in several ways. Union coverage and...

We address this question by examining the conditional dynamics of inflation and output growth in response to markup shocks for 14 industrialized countries. Markup shocks create a trade-off between output gap and inflation stabilization purposes, and the theory predicts that conditional on such...

We investigate the theoretical conditions for effectiveness of government consumption expenditure expansions using US, Euro area and UK data. Fiscal expansions taking place when monetary policy is accommodative lead to large output multipliers in normal times. The 2009-2010 packages need not...

We compare the transmission of fiscal shocks in four OECD countries and in the Euro area. Fiscal shocks are identified in a SVAR by the restrictions that disturbances to government consumption, government investment and government employment increase output and deficits contemporaneously. These...