This article investigates the business cycle behaviour of measures of perceived uncertainty and financial risk premia in Germany over the past two decades. Both the perceived uncertainty and the financial risk premia are highly countercyclical and may therefore amplify and propagate the...

Smets and Wouters (2003) find that at short- and medium-term horizons stochastic variations in the goods market mark-up are the most important source of inflation variability in the euro area. This article shows that an empirically plausible alternative interpretation is that the estimated price...