The recent financial crisis has put the spotlight on the rapid rise in credit which preceded it. In this paper, we provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the credit boom and the macroeconomic context in which it developed. We find that the boom was unusually long and associated with...

The argument that policy risk, i.e. uncertainty about monetary and fiscal policy, has been holding back the economic recovery in the U.S. during the Great Recession has a large popular appeal. We analyze the role of policy risk in explaining business cycle fluctuations by using an estimated New...

Robert Triffin became famous with his trenchant analyses of the vulnerabilities of the Bretton Woods system. These are still at the center of many discussions today. This paper argues that there is a remarkable continuity in Triffin's work. From his earliest writings, Triffin developed a vision...

We analyse the implications of intra-firm bargaining for business cycle dynamics in models with large firms and search frictions. Intra-firm bargaining implies a feedback effect from the marginal revenue product to wage setting which leads firms to over-hire in order to reduce workers'...

As GDP is highly correlated with both entering and exiting firms, we develop a totally microfounded DSGE model with endogenous firms entry as well as exit decisions. We show that the simplifying assumption of a constant firms' death rate made by the recent literature on DSGE modelling can lead...

This paper examines the role of uncertainty shocks in a one-sector, representative-agent dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. When prices are flexible, uncertainty shocks are not capable of producing business cycle comovements among key macro variables. With countercyclical markups...

This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets for factors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households' funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and tax benefits of corporate debt are...

We develop a behavioral macroeconomic model in which agents use simple but biased rules to forecast future output and inflation. This model generates endogenous waves of optimism and pessimism (Animal Spirits") that are generated by the correlation of biased beliefs. We contrast the dynamics of...

We describe an algorithm that is able to compute the solution of a singular linear difference system under rational expectations. The algorithm uses the Generalized Schur Factorization and is illustrated by a simple example.