This paper discusses the paper "The Source of Historical Economic Fluctuations: An Analysis using Long-Run Restrictions" by Neville Francis and Valerie A. Ramey. It argues that these authors have made great progress both in the precise measurement of labor input as well as determining the effect...

Estimating natural rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is important for understanding the joint dynamics of unemployment, inflation, and inflation expectation. However, existing literature falls short in endogenizing inflation expectation together with NAIRU in a model consistent way. We develop and...

This Paper presents a reappraisal of unemployment movements in the European Union. Our analysis is based on the chain reaction theory of unemployment, which focuses on (a) the interaction among labour market adjustment processes, (b) the interplay between these adjustment processes and the...

This paper explores the two common concepts of the natural rate of unemployment: (i) the stable, long-run equilibrium rate of unemployment; and (ii) the equilibrium unemployment rate at which there is no tendency for this rate to change, given the exogenous variables. The first concept (common...

Monetary policy affects both real variables, such as employment, unemployment and output and nominal variables such as nominal interest and inflation rates. For close to a decade the principal focus of monetary policy has been on inflation. During a recession, or when one appears imminent, the...

What role does labour play in firms’ market value? We explore this question using a production-based asset-pricing model with frictions in the adjustment of both capital and labor. We posit that hiring of labour is akin to investment in capital and that the two interact, with the interaction...

Early studies of business cycles argued that contractions in economic activity were briefer (shorter) and more violent (rapid) than expansions. This paper systematically investigates this claim and in the process discovers a robust new business cycle fact: expansions and contractions in output...

A model of the labour market under firing restrictions and endogenous quits is constructed. It is shown that in the spirit of Blanchard and Summers (1988), the model can generate multiple equilibria, with a low-quits/high-unemployment equilibrium coexisting with a high-quits/low-unemployment...

Using a dynamic factor model that allows for changes in both the long- run growth rate of output and the volatility of business cycles, we document a significant decline in long-run output growth in the United States. Our evidence supports the view that this slowdown started prior to the Great...

In this paper, I investigate the scope of a model with exogenous habit formation - or 'catching up with the Joneses', see Abel (1990) - to generate the observed equity premium as well as other key macroeconomic facts. Along the way, I derive restrictions for four out of eight parameters for a...