Using Bayesian methods, I estimate a DSGE model where a recession is initiated by losses suffered by banks and exacerbated by their inability to extend credit to the real sector. The event triggering the recession has the workings of a redistribution shock: a small sector of the economy --...

Monetary policy has real effects through credit supply and demand, and since these changes are mostly unobserved, the complete identification of the credit channel is generally unfeasible. Bank lending surveys by central banks, however, contain reliable quarterly information on changes in loan...

It is often assumed that wedges evolve according to VAR(1) in the applications of business cycle accounting (BCA). However, recent research finds that the wedges have no VAR(1) representation in many dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) economies, and that there might be a...

This paper uses readily accessible aggregate time series to measure the probability that an employed worker becomes unemployed and the probability that an unemployed worker finds a job, the ins and outs of unemployment. Since 1948, the job finding probability has accounted for three-quarters of...

The standard one-sector real business cycle model is unable to generate expectations-driven fluctuations. The addition of countercyclical markups and modest investment adjustment costs offers an easy fix to this conundrum. The simulated model replicates the regular features of U.S. aggregate...

Empirical evidence suggests that goods are highly heterogeneous with respect to the degree of price rigidity. We develop a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model to study the equilibrium determinacy properties of interest rate rules that respond to inflation measures differing in their...

Measured total factor productivity often declines sharply during financial crises. In 1982, the Chilean manufacturing sector suffered a severe contraction in output, most of which can be accounted for by a falling Solow residual. This paper uses establishment data from the Chilean manufacturing...

How should environmental policy respond to economic fluctuations caused by persistent productivity shocks? This paper answers that question using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium real business cycle model that includes a pollution externality. I first estimate the relationship between...

The Chilean economy experienced a decade of sustained growth in aggregate output and productivity after the 1982 financial crisis. This paper analyzes the role of allocative efficiency on total factor productivity (TFP) in the manufacturing sector by applying the methodology of Hsieh and Klenow...

This paper provides a rational expectations equilibrium framework to organize the following observations about the U.S. housing market from 1975 to 2007: (i) housing occupancy patterns were approximately constant, (ii) rents were stable, and (iii) house prices appreciated considerably in the...