This paper shows how the richer frequency and variety of fiscal policy shocks available in an international sample can be analyzed recognizing the heterogeneity that exists across different countries. The main conclusion of our empirical analysis is that the question "what is the fiscal policy...

A key precursor of twentieth-century financial crises in emerging and advanced economies alike was the rapid buildup of leverage. Those emerging economies that avoided leverage booms during the 2000s also were most likely to avoid the worst effects of the twenty-first century's first global...

The paper looks at the development of the secular stagnation thesis, in the context of the economic history of the time. It explores some 19th century antecedents of the thesis, before turning to its interwar development. Not only Alvin Hansen, but Keynes and Hicks were involved in the...

We provide a novel methodology for estimating time-varying weights in linear prediction pools, which we call Dynamic Pools, and use it to investigate the relative forecasting performance of DSGE models with and without financial frictions for output growth and inflation from 1992 to 2011. We...

This paper comments on five aspects of globalization: (1) the gains from international flows of goods and capital; (2) the role of foreign direct investment and reasons for its increase; (3) the preventions and management of currency crises; (4) the fluctuation of relative currency values; and...

Employing a large number of real and financial indicators, we use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to forecast real-time measures of economic activity. Importantly, the predictor set includes option-adjusted credit spread indexes based on bond portfolios sorted by maturity and credit risk as...

We propose a new approach to test of the null of full-information rational expectations which is informative about whether rejections of the null reflect departures from rationality or full-information. This approach can also quantify the economic significance of departures from the null by...

Using a simple empirical strategy, we decode the information in insider trades. Exploiting the fact that insiders trade for a variety of reasons, we show that there is predictable, identifiable "routine" insider trading that is not informative for the future of firms. Stripping away these...