This paper develops a general-equilibrium model of skill-biased technological change that approximates the observed shifts in the shares of wage and non-wageincome going to the top decile of U.S. households since 1980. Under realisticassumptions, we find that all agents can benefi…t from the...

For a panel of 75 countries, we find that increases in global agricultural commodity prices that are caused by unfavorable harvest shocks in other regions of the world significantly curtail domestic economic activity. The effects are much larger than for average global agricultural price shifts....

Many policy-makers and researchers view the recent financial and real economic crises across North America, Europe and beyond as a global phenomenon. Some have argued that this global recession has a common source: the U.S. financial crisis. This paper investigates the extent to which a credit...

We add agency costs as in Carlstrom and Fuerst (1997) into a two-country, two-good international business-cycle model. In our model, changes in the relative price of investment arise endogenously. Despite the fact that technology shocks are uncorrelated across countries, the relative price of...

All explorations of the future of the Euro show serious risks for its survival in the present form. The road map of the Five EU Presidents presented in 2015 is far from sufficient to reduce the risks of the Euro zone falling apart by Brexit type developments or new economic shocks. The EU...

The financial crisis and its ensuing effects have brought back into the limelight the issue of cycles and of policies which fuel or mitigate crises. Cognitive and operational models in economics and business are questioned. There is a specter of much lower economic growth in the industrialized...

This paper surveys the literature on the linkages between asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes. It focuses on three major questions. First, what are the basic theoretical linkages between asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes? Second, what is the empirical evidence supporting these...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the macroeconomic implications of financial imperfections. It focuses on two major channels through which financial imperfections can affect macroeconomic outcomes. The first channel, which operates through the demand side of finance...

We measure the time-varying strength of macrofinancial linkages within and across the US and euro area economies by relying on factor models with drifting parameters, where real and financial cycles are extracted and shocks are identified via sign and exclusion restrictions. The main results...

We study the link between the global financial cycle and macroeconomic tail risks using quantile vector autoregressions. Contractionary shocks to financial conditions and monetary policy in the United States cause elevated downside risks to growth around the world. By tightening financial...