We develop a novel empirical approach to identify the effectiveness of policies against a pandemic. The essence of our approach is the insight that epidemic dynamics are best tracked over stages, rather than over time. We use a normalization procedure that makes the pre-policy paths of the...

We study whether the accuracy of real-time estimates of the output gap produced by the OECD has improved over time by examining a panel dataset on real-time output gap revisions for 15 countries from 1991 Q1 - 2005 Q4. We use a simple panel data regression and a state space model, with common...

Investment fell sharply in the euro area after the financial crisis and has not yet returned to pre-crisis levels in many core economies. Focusing on the four largest euro-area countries, this paper investigates the role of uncertainty for investment dynamics. By doing so, we compare five...

We present a model in which banks and other financial intermediaries face both occasionally binding borrowing constraints, and costs of equity issuance. Near the steady state, these intermediaries can raise equity finance at no cost through retained earnings. However, even moderately large...

This paper presents a non-technical overview of the recent investment literature with a special emphasis on the connection between technological progress and the investment decision. First of all, we acknowledge that some dramatic advances have been made in the 1990s in understanding and...

In this paper, we propose to explain capital accumulation in a stochastic framework by taking into account the two main motives for investment. Specifically, firms invest to expand capacity and to replace old machines. The model considers irreversible investment under uncertainty and embodied...

In this paper, we extend the usual models of irreversible investment under uncertainty by introducing the stock of public capital as an input for the private sector. Public investment takes place in a stochastic environment. Public capital then increases the productivity of private capital which...

Price setting has become more flexible following a string of large adverse shocks (Covid-19, the Ukraine War). We argue that a shift to a high-uncertainty regime incentivizes firms to invest in their ability to adjust prices. We formalize this idea in a general equilibrium model with endogenous...

We investigate whether frictions in US financial markets amplify the international propagation of US financial shocks. The dynamics of the US economy is modeled jointly with global macroeconomic and financial variables using a threshold vector autoregression that allows us to capture...

We develop an extended real business cycle (RBC) model with financially con-strained firms and non-pledgeable intangible capital. Based on a model-consistentseries for firms’ borrowing conditions, we find, within a structural vector autoregres-sion (SVAR) framework, that, in response to an...