This dissertation empirically investigates macroeconomic fluctuations.In the first chapter, I study nontechnology shocks. It is popular to identify technology shocks as shocks permanently affecting labor productivity in SVAR. However it potentially misidentifies nontechnology shocks permanently...

New residential construction is significantly more procyclical in emerging markets than in developed countries, although the correlation between aggregate investment and output is similar across emerging and developed countries. This paper shows that a multi-sector stochastic growth model with a...

Castro and Coen-Pirani (2008) document that aggregate skilled hours and employment both became more volatile after the mid-1980s, in contrast to the simultaneous volatility decline of most aggregates, including overall hours and employment and unskilled hours and employment. In chapter 1, I...

My thesis explores the following question: how workers of different skill are allocated across jobs and unemployment over the business cycle. I am interestedin understanding the "over-qualification" of workers that occurs during periods of high unemployment, as increased congestion in the labor...

This dissertation computes the optimal monetary and fiscal policy for small open and emerging economies in an estimated medium-scale model. The model departs from the conventional approach as it encompasses all the major nominal and real rigidities normally found in the literature in a single...

We consider a multi-sector overlapping generations model with oligopolistic firms in the output markets and wage-setting trade unions in the labour markets. A coordination problem between firms creates multiple temporary equilibria which are either Walrasian or of the Keynesian unemployment...

Within a macroeconomic disequilibrium model it turns out that stationary and simple adaptive policies are not capable of stabilizing efficient steady states and lead to periodic or irregular fluctuations for large sets of policy parameters. The application of recent control methods for chaotic...

This paper reviews Chilean stabilization policy during the 1990s andargues that, while the merits of Chilean policy should be praised, there are fourpuzzles in conventional interpretations of the Chilean experience worth studying.First, the policy of targeting indexed interest rates does not...

Die Dissertation untersucht am Beispiel des Volkskommissariates für Außenhandel die Entstehung der frühen Sowjetbürokratie und analysiert administrative und politische Prozesse, die der Herausbildung des Stalinismus vorangingen. Gegenstand der Untersuchung sind die Probleme des staatlich...