In this paper we contribute to the literature on the identification of macroeconomic shocks by proposing a Bayesian SVAR with timevarying volatility of innovations that depend on a hidden Markov process, referred to as an MS-SVAR. With sufficient statistical information in the data, the distinct...

This paper investigates the impact of macroeconomic volatility on growth in a panel of 121 countries over the period 1980 to 2010. We confirm the Ramey and Ramey (1995) result that macroeconomic volatility is negatively related to economic growth using a different empirical methodology and a...

This paper presents an estimated open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for Estonia. The model is designed to highlight the main driving forces behind the Estonian business cycle and to understand how euro area economic shocks and its monetary policy affect the small open...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the inflation process in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania within the framework of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) model of Galí and Gertler (1999) and Galí et al. (2001). An open economy extension by Leith and Malley (2003) and a NKPC model...

This paper ascertains the determinants of household saving in Estonia based on a microeconometric analysis of household budget surveys from 2002 to 2005. Higher income leads to more saving, but the effect is largest for unanticipated income shocks. Ownership of real estate does not affect...

The Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) entails that consumption reacts more strongly to persistent than to temporary income shocks. This prediction is tested using data from the Estonian Household Budget Surveys for 2002-2007. The dataset contains questions which make it possible to distinguish...

This paper employs fifteen dynamic macroeconomic models maintained within the European System of Central Banks to assess the size of fiscal multipliers in European countries. Using a set of common simulations, we consider transitory and permanent shocks to government expenditures and different...

This paper looks for empirical evidence of rational speculative bubbles on the Estonian stock market during the period 1996–1999. Four different testing methodologies are used in the paper: two tests are indirect, looking for statistical “footprints” of the speculative dynamics in the...

In this paper we estimate an extended version of the previously estimated small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for Estonia (Gelain and Kulikov 2009). Here we introduce financial frictions, in the form of the so-called financial accelerator. Our main findings are: (1)...