It has been shown that under perfect competition and a Cobb-Douglas production function, a basic real business cycle model may exhibit indeterminacy and sunspot fluctuations when income tax rates are determined by a balanced-budget rule. This paper introduces in an otherwise standard real...

This paper develops and estimates a general equilibrium rational expectations model with search and multiple equilibria where aggregate shocks have a permanent effect on the unemployment rate. If agents' wealth decreases, the unemployment rate increases for a potentially indefinite period. This...

The paper examines the determinants of employment growth, drawing on data available across a sample of Caribbean countries. To that end, the paper analyzes estimates of the employment-output elasticity and the response of employment growth to major sources of labor market determinants, in the...

This Selected Issues paper for Chile describes the postcrisis recovery experience. The recovery from the 2008–2009 global crisis has been markedly different both among advanced and emerging economies. The steady improvement in the labor wedge-distortions related to the consumption leisure...

Abstract Using a novel dataset, I quantify the magnitude of the EU-27 countries’ output gap revisions in 2002–2014, and study the implications of this uncertainty for the optimal fiscal policy with a DSGE model. I find that taking into account the output gap uncertainty (i.e. the difficulty...

Dramatic changes in the relative prices of goods in international trade have accompanied, and indeed preceded, the global crisis. These changes are reflected in the terms of trade ofindividual countries and in the relative prices of goods within those countries. Asia-Pacific countries are...

Dramatic changes in the relative prices of goods in international trade have accompanied, and indeed preceded, the global crisis. These changes are reflected in the terms of trade of individual countries and in the relative prices of goods within those countries. Asia-Pacific countries are...

We contribute to the task of identifying trends and cycles in energy prices by examining very long series of prices for coal and oil, going back to 1650 in the case of coal and 1859 in the case of oil. We find annual rates of increase in real price of greater than two percent are found for coal...

This paper investigates the welfare costs of business cycles in a heterogeneous agent, overlapping generations economy which is distinguished by idiosyncratic labor market risk. Aggregate variation arises both in terms of aggregate productivity shocks and countercyclical variation in the...

The goal of this thesis is twofold: it aims, firstly, at a description of cycles in SouthAfrican financial variables and, secondly, at the evaluation of the relationshipbetween cycles in financial variables and the South African business cycle. The studyis based on the original business cycle...