We investigate the effects of uncertainty shocks on unemployment dynamics in the post-WWII U.S. recessions via non-linear (Smooth-Transition) VARs. The relevance of uncertainty shocks is found to be much larger than that predicted by standard linear VARs in terms of i) magnitude of the reaction...

What does a monetary policy shock do? We answer this question by estimating a new-Keynesian monetary policy DSGE model for a number of economies with a variety of empirical proxies of the business cycle. The effects of two different policy shocks, an unexpected interest rate hike conditional on...

We investigate the effects of uncertainty shocks on unemployment dynamics in the post- WWII U.S. recessions via non-linear (Smooth-Transition) VARs. The relevance of uncertainty shocks is found to be much larger than that predicted by standard linear VARs in terms of (i) magnitude of the...

We estimate nonlinear VARs to assess to what extent fiscal spending multipliers are countercyclical in the United States. We deal with the issue of nonfundamentalness due to fiscal foresight by appealing to sums of revisions of expectations of fiscal expenditures. This measure of anticipated...

This paper estimates and compares New-Keynesian DSGE monetary models of the business cycle derived under two different pricing schemes—Calvo (1983) and Rotemberg (1982)—under a positive trend inflation rate. Our empirical findings (i) support trend inflation as an empirically relevant...

We employ a novel identification scheme to quantify the macroeconomic effects of monetary policy shocks in the United States. The identification of the shocks is achieved by exploiting the instabilities in the contemporaneous coefficients of the structural VAR (SVAR) and in the covariance matrix...

We estimate nonlinear VARs to assess to what extent fiscal spending multipliers are countercyclical in the United States. We deal with the issue of non-fundamentalness due to fiscal foresight by appealing to sums of revisions of expectations of fiscal expenditures. This measure of anticipated...

We employ a nonlinear VAR to document the asymmetric reaction of real economic activity to uncertainty shocks. An uncertainty shock occurring in recessions triggers an abrupt and deep drop followed by a quick rebound and a temporary overshoot. The same shock hitting in expansions induces a...

We employ a parsimonious nonlinear Interacted-VAR to examine whether the real effects of uncertainty shocks are greater when the economy is at the ZeroLower Bound. We find the contractionary effects of uncertainty shocks to be statistically larger when the ZLB is binding, with differences that...

We investigate the role played by systematic monetary policy in tackling the real effects of uncertainty shocks in U.S. recessions and expansions. We model key indicators of the business cycle with a nonlinear VAR that allows for different dynamics in busts and booms. Uncertainty shocks are...