The authors provide empirical evidence on the dynamic effects of tax liability changes in the United States. We distinguish between surprise and anticipated tax changes using a timing convention. We document that pre-announced but not yet implemented tax cuts give rise to contractions in output,...

This paper studies the effectiveness of Euro Area (EA) fiscal policy, during the recent financial crisis, using an estimated New Keynesian model with a bank. A key dimension of policy in the crisis was massive government support for banks - that dimension has so far received little attention in...

A multivariate structural time series model is applied to the factor inputs of a production function (or components thereof) to estimate the Belgian output gap. The usefulness of capacity utilization is also investigated but the variable is not given a prominent status. The number of independent...

This paper reviews recent approaches to modeling the labour market, and assesses their implications for inflation dynamics through both their effect on marginal cost and on price-setting behavior. In a search and matching environment, we consider the following modeling setups: right-to-manage...

We study sources and consequences of fluctuations in the housing market. The upward trend in real housing prices of the last 40 years can be explained by slow technological progress in the housing sector. Over the business cycle, housing demand and housing technology shocks explain one-quarter...

In this paper, we investigate how the dynamic effects of excess liquidity shocks on economic activity, asset prices and inflation differ over time. We show that the impact varies considerably over time, depends on the source of increased liquidity (M1, M3-M1 or credit) and the underlying state...

This paper uses a frequency domain approach to gain insight into the correlation between survey indicators and year-on-year GDP growth. Using the Baxter-King filter, we split up each series into three components: a short-term, a business cycle (oscillations between 18 and 96 months) and a...

After the recent banking crisis in 2008, financial market conditions have turned out to be a relevant factor for economic fluctuations. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the impact of financial frictions on the U.S. business cycle. The analysis compares the original Smets and...

The VIX, the stock market option-based implied volatility, strongly co-moves with measures of the monetary policy stance. When decomposing the VIX into two components, a proxy for risk aversion and expected stock market volatility ("uncertainty"), we find that a lax monetary policy decreases...

This paper estimates a medium-scale DSGE model with search unemployment by matching model and data spectra. Price mark-up shocks emerge as the main source of business-cycle fluctuations in the euro area. Key factors in the propagation of these disturbances are a high degree of inflation...