Using U.S. data from 1929 to 2013, we show that elevated credit-market sentiment in year t-2 is associated with a decline in economic activity in years t through t+2. Underlying this result is the existence of predictable mean reversion in credit-market conditions. That is, when our sentiment...

Macroeconomists have long recognized that activity-gap measures are unreliable in real time and that this can present serious difficulties for stabilization policy. This paper investigates whether the credit-to-GDP ratio gap, which has been proposed as a reference point for accumulating...

Two often-divergent U.S. GDP estimates are available, a widely-used expenditure-side version GDPE, and a much less widely-used income-side version GDI . The authors propose and explore a "forecast combination" approach to combining them. They then put the theory to work, producing a superior...

The authors examine the optimal labor market-policy mix over the business cycle. In a search and matching model with risk-averse workers, endogenous hiring and separation, and unobservable search effort they first show how to decentralize the constrained-efficient allocation. This can be...

Inference about common international stochastic trends and interest rates is gained using a small open economy model, data from seven developed countries, and Bayesian methods. Shocks to these common factors explain up to 17 percent of the variability of output in several economies....

This paper attempts to quantify business cycle effects of bank capital requirements. The authors use a general equilibrium model in which financing of capital goods production is subject to an agency problem. At the center of this problem is the interaction between entrepreneurs' moral hazard...