This paper examines the synchronization of business cycles across the G7 countries during US recessions since the 1870s. Using a dynamic measure of correlations, results depend on the globalization period under consideration. During the 2007–2009 recession, business cycles co-movements...

This paper studies the stochastic processes of household income in China using longitudinal data from CHNS 1989–2009. We consider both labor income and total household income. We find that (i) compared with the US households in PSID, income of the Chinese households is much more uncertain;...

This study shows that China’s Consumer Expectation Index contains useful information about pure expectation shocks, which are unrelated to economic fundamentals. It turns out that such shocks are likely to be an important independent driver of industrial output growth.

This paper takes a deeper look at the measurement of the consumption–wealth ratio and analyzes its ability to capture variations in expected future stock returns. I find evidence of stock return predictability by taking a different approach than predictive regressions.

This paper suggests that a model in which firms face credit constrains on hiring labor can explain both the behavior of the labor wedge and the “jobless recoveries” phenomenon of the last three recessions. Using the corporate credit spread as a measure of firms' credit conditions, I show...

The labor market in Germany is more sclerotic and volatile than in the US. We show theoretically that sclerosis and large volatilities are two sides of the same coin. Both may be driven by large hiring costs and low quit rates.

This paper suggests that a model in which firms face credit constraints on hiring labor can explain both the behavior of the labor wedge and the “jobless recoveries” phenomenon of the last three recessions. Using the corporate credit spread as a measure of firms’ credit conditions, I show...

Hours volatility has changed non-monotonically across skill groups since the mid-1980s. The welfare cost of business cycles of mid-skilled workers became similar to that of high-skilled workers, while the relative welfare cost of low- to high-skilled workers remains very high.

The U.S. prewar output series exhibit smaller shock-persistence than postwar-series. Some studies suggest that this may be due to linear interpolation used to generate missing prewar data. Monte Carlo simulations that support this view generate large standard-errors, making such inference...

Using data for U.S. grocery and department store sales from 1919–1939, this paper shows that expected price changes have asymmetric effects on consumption spending. Department store sales (durable consumption) react negatively to expected deflation, but grocery sales (non-durable consumption)...