This article shows that the "risk premium" shock in Smets and Wouters (2007) can be interpreted as a structural shock to the demand for safe and liquid assets such as short-term US Treasury securities. Several implications of this interpretation are discussed.

The Chicago Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used for policy analysis and forecasting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. This article describes its specification and estimation, its dynamic characteristics and how it is used to forecast the US economy. In many...

The Chicago Fed dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is used for policy analysis and forecasting at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. This guide describes its specification, estimation, dynamic characteristics, and how it is used to forecast the U.S. economy. In many respects...

In modelling macroeconomic time series, often a monthly indicator of global real economic activity is used. We propose a new indicator, named World steel production, and compare it to other existing indicators, precisely the Kilian's index of global real economic activity and the index of OECD...

Much of the recent interest in the relationship between growth and distribution has focused on advanced economies and neglected issues of development and structural transformation. The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to this gap by arguing that, even in the short-run, some of the...

This comment explains why the findings presented in Beaudry and Lucke (2009) are misleading.

This note comments on the state of macroeconomics, arguing that the micro founded macro that developed after 1970s has been a wasteful detour. The paper will appear in a symposium in Homo Oeconomicus, vol. 27 (2), 2010, on the crisis and the response from the British Academy to the questions...

The economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory. These representative-agent models have an intrinsic distributional bias in favor of the rich. The bias is compounded by the use of revenue-neutrality in the allocation of emission permits. The result...

The economic analysis of global warming is dominated by models based on optimal growth theory. This approach can generate biases in the presence of positional goods and status effects. We show that by ignoring these direct consumption externalities, integrated assessment models overestimate the...

Mainstream macroeconomics has pursued 'micro founded' models based on the explicit optimization by representative agents. The result has been a long and wasteful detour. But elements of the Lucas critique are relevant, also for heterodox economists. Challenging common heterodox views on...