We solve a real business cycle model with rational inattention (an RI-RBC model). In the RI-RBC model, the growth rates of employment, investment, and output are about as persistent as in the data, with an amount of inattention consistent with survey data on expectations. Moreover, consumption,...

This paper documents the existence of a significant forecast error on crude oil futures. We interpret it as a risk premium, which, in part, could have been explained by means of a real-time US business cycle indicator, such as the degree of capacity utilization in manufacturing. This result is...

This paper tests whether the proposition that globalisation has led to greater sensitivity of domestic inflation to the global output gap (the global output gap hypothesisʺ) holds for the euro area. The empirical analysis uses quarterly data over the period 1979-2003. Measures of the global...

The rapid rise in the price of crude oil between 2004 and the summer of 2006 are the subject of debate. This paper investigates the factors that might have contributed to the oil price increase in addition to demand and supply for crude oil, by expanding a model for crude oil prices to include...

We explore the dynamic effects of news about a future technology improvement which turns out ex post to be overoptimistic. We find that it is difficult to generate a boom-bust cycle (a period in which stock prices, consumption, investment and employment all rise and then crash) in response to...

We develop a search-matching model, where firms search for customers (e.g. in form of advertising). Firms use long-term contracts and bargain over prices, resulting in a price mark up above marginal cost, which is procyclical and depends on firms' relative bargaining power. Product market...

We review the determinants of the discretionary fiscal policy action of governments in the euro area and in other advanced economies during the past 20 years. This is done by estimating fiscal reaction functions using dynamic panel techniques and country-by-country estimates. The results suggest...

Identifying fiscal multipliers is usually constrained by the absence of a counterfactual scenario. Our new data set allows overcoming this problem by making use of the fact that recommendations under the EU's excessive deficit procedure (EDP) provide both a baseline no-policy-change scenario and...