Using data for six OECD countries, this paper studies the effect of macroeconomic conditions on the mortality index kt in the well-known Lee-Carter model. Significant correlations are found with real GDP growth rates in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and with unemployment rate changes...

We consider a linear growth model with idiosyncratic productivity shocks in whichproducers cannot commit to repay their loans. Borrowing constraints are determinedendogenously by the borrowers’ incentives to repay, assuming that defaulters lose a shareof output and are excluded from future...

The aim of this paper is to account for both the short-run uctuations and thevery-long run transformations induced by technological change in analysing long-rungrowth patterns. The paper investigates the possible imprint left by short-run uctuationson the long run dynamics by aecting the...

Strong procyclical fluctuations in the durable production are the most prominent featureof the empirical response to monetary shocks. This paper investigates the role of preferencesin matching this feature of the data in a two-sector sticky price model with flexibly priceddurables. The reaction...

This paper extends a New Keynesian model to include roles for currency and depositsas competing sources of liquidity services demanded by households. It showsthat, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the Barnett critique applies: While a Divisiaaggregate of monetary services tracks the true...

We find that U.S. corporations' demand for liquidity is sensitive to two importantfactors: uncertainty facing the rm and the quality of corporate governance. Fol-lowing prior research, we find that both factors have important influences on firms'cash holdings. Our results also indicate that the...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on thespreads of individual rms' credit default swaps (CDS). While existing literature ac-knowledges the importance of the levels of macroeconomic factors in determiningCDS spreads, we nd that the second moments of these...

This paper constructs a two-country stochastic growth model in which neutraland investment-specic technology shocks are nonstationary but cointegrated acrosseconomies. It uses this model to interpret data showing that while real investmenthas grown faster than real consumption in the United...

The co-movement of stocks and of fundamentals changes across the business cycle. Empiricalstudies have shown that the correlation of stock returns is stronger in crisis. Weshow that the correlation of fundamentals is the highest during crisis using a large sampleof quarterly firm revenues...

This paper analyzes the e¤ectiveness of the tax and transfer systemsin the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the currenteconomic crisis. We …nd that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a propor-tional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...