We examine the relationship between institutions, culture and cyclical fluctuations for a sample of 45 European, Middle Eastern and North African countries. Better governance is associated with shorter and less severe contractions and milder expansions. Certain cultural traits, such as lack of...

This paper illustrates the philosophy which forms the basis of calibration exercises in general equilibrium macroeconomic models and the details of the procedure, the advantages and the disadvantages of the approach, with particular reference to the issue of testing ``false'' economic models. We...

This paper formally examines the implications of international consumption risk sharing for a panel of industrialized countries. We theoretically derive the international consumption insurance proposition in a simple setup and show how it should be modified in more complicated models. We...

This paper investigates what has caused output and inflation volatility to fall in the US using a small scale structural model using Bayesian techniques and rolling samples. There are instabilities in the posterior of the parameters describing the private sector, the policy rule and the standard...

A method to estimate DSGE models using the raw data is proposed. The approach links the observables to the model counterparts via a flexible specification which does not require the model-based component to be solely located at business cycle frequencies, allows the non model-based component to...

This paper provides a method to estimate time varying coefficients structural VARs which are non-recursive and potentially overidentified. The procedure allows for linear and non-linear restrictions on the parameters, maintains the multi-move structure of standard algorithms and can be used to...

We propose a method to estimate time invariant cyclical DSGE models using the information provided by a variety of filters. We treat data filtered with alternative procedures as contaminated proxies of the relevant model-based quantities and estimate structural and non-structural parameters...

We examine the effects of extracting monetary policy disturbances with semi-structural and structural VARs, using data generated by a limited participation model under partial accommodative and feedback rules. We find that, in general, misspecification is substantial: short run coefficients...

We examine the dynamics of US output and inflation using a structural time varying coefficient VAR. We show that there are changes in the volatility of both variables and in the persistence of inflation. Technology shocks explain changes in output volatility, while a combination of technology,...

This chapter highlights the problems that structural methods and SVAR approaches have when estimating DSGE models and examining their ability to capture important features of the data. We show that structural methods are subject to severe identification problems due, in large part, to the nature...