The relatively infrequent nature of major credit distress events makes a historical approach particularly useful. Using a combination of historical narrative and econometric techniques, we identify major periods of credit distress from 1875 to 2007, examine the extent to which credit distress...

We construct a multiple-shock version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model’s well-known tendency to underpredict the volatility of key labor market variables. Data on U.S. job-finding and job separation probabilities are used to help estimate the...

This paper explores the link between short-run cycles and long-run growth by examining the cyclical properties of R&D at the disaggregated industry level. The relationship between R&D and output is estimated using an annual panel of 20 U.S. manufacturing industries from 1958 to 1998. The results...

The paper documents how cyclical fluctuations in market work vary over the life cycle and then assesses the predictions of a life-cycle version of the growth model for those observations. The analysis yields a simple but striking finding. The main discrepancy between the model and that data lies...

A description of a model which demonstrates that delegating monetary policy to an independent policy board with discretionary powers substantially reduces policy uncertainty while maintaining political accountability.

The authors estimate common and nation-specific components of technology shocks, real demand shocks, and combined (common and nation-specific) monetary shocks using quarterly data for Korea and the United States.

An estimation of an optimal program of distortionary taxes, money growth, and borrowing to finance a stream of expenditures based on a real business cycle model in which distribution issues between the rich and poor play a fundamental role in policy decisions.

This paper examines the stochastic properties of aggregate macroeconomic time series from the standpoint of fractionally integrated models, focusing on the persistence of economic shocks. We develop a simple macroeconomic model that exhibits long-range dependence, a consequence of aggregation in...

A presentation of a dynamic general-equilibrium model with productive public capital to help account for differences in the business cycle characteristics of public- versus private- sector expenditures in postwar U.S. data.

A study of the effects of expectations and central bank credibility on the economy's dynamic transition path during a disinflation. Using a version of the Fuhrer-Moore model, it compares simulations under different specifications that vary according to the way expectations are formed and the...