This paper investigates the time-varying correlation between the EU12-wide business cycle and the initial EU12 member-countries based on Scalar-BEKK and multivariate Riskmetrics model frameworks for the period 1980-2012. The paper provides evidence that changes in the business cycle...

This paper examines the spatial interaction of neighboring cities over their employment cycles. The cycles of neighboring cities tend to be more similar to one another than are those of non-neighboring cities, although this is due primarily to neighbors' tendency to be in the same state. In...

In this paper, we examine the role of the business cycle in divorce. To do so, we use a panel of 30 European countries covering the period from 1991 to 2010. We find a negative effect of the unemployment rate on the divorce rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of the divorce rate, even...

This paper presents the logic and structure of a small and parsimonious macroeconometric model designed for output gap and potential growth estimation in a data-poor environment. Such results can be useful in calculating the cyclically adjusted budget balances which are a key indicator for...

Economic growth data does not show how such growth was achieved. Was it based on income growth and consumption spending levels or was it based on borrowings to extend the income levels? The question is vital for deciding which economic tools work best for correcting imbalances. The main...

This paper addresses the following questions: which was the contribution of banks’assets to the US’ expansion in the period until the financial crisis? Did commercial banks respect capital requirements? The two questions are strictly interrelated as, according to a recent literature,...

The aim of this paper is to simulate profit expectations as an emergent property using an agent based model. The paper builds upon adaptive expectations, interactive expectations and small world networks, combining them into a single adaptive interactive profit expectations model (AIE)....

We build an analytically and computationally tractable stochastic equilibrium model of unemployment in heterogeneous labor markets. Facing search frictions within markets and reallocation frictions between markets, workers endogenously separate from employment and endogenously reallocate between...

In this paper we present a macroeconomic microfounded framework with heterogeneous agents – households, firms, banks – which interact through a decentralized matching process presenting common features across four markets – goods, labor, credit and deposit. We study the dynamics of the...

Over the last 77 years (from 1935), all 7 cyclical maximums of the solar activity overlapped closely with the US recessions, thus predicting (or triggering?) 8 out of 13 recessions officially identified by NBER (including one “double-deep” recession). Over the last 64 years (from 1948), all...