We study the effect of different types of macroeconomic impulses on the nominal yield curve. We employ two distinct approaches to identifying economic shocks in VARs. Our first approach uses a structural VAR due to Gali (1992). Our second strategy identifies fundamental impulses from alternative...

Barksy-Miron [1989] find that the postwar U.S. economy exhibits a regular seasonal cycle, as well as the business cycle phenomenon. Are these findings consistent with current equilibrium business cycle theories as surveyed by Prescott [1986]? We consider a dynamic, stochastic equilibrium...

This chapter reviews recent research that grapples with the question: What happens after an exogenous shock to monetary policy? We argue that this question is interesting because it lies at the center of a particular approach to assessing the empirical plausibility of structural economic models...

We ask how macroeconomic and financial variables respond to empirical measures of shocks to technology, labor supply, and monetary policy. These three shocks account for the preponderance of output, productivity, and price fluctuations. Only technology shocks have a permanent impact on economic...

Remarks at the Swiss National Bank Research Conference, Zurich, Switzerland, September 19, 2008