Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link between macroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Carter model, we assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvency of a life insurance company. Liabilities in our stochastic simulation framework...

This paper provides an overall picture of the Philippine business cycles covering the period 1981 to 2003 by characterizing them in terms of volatility, co-movement and persistence. As a trend-cycle decomposition technique, the most frequently used Hodrick Prescott filter was applied. The period...

In this paper we analyze how the availability of credit influences the relationship between government size as a proxy for fiscal stabilization policy and the amplitude of business cycle fluctuations in a sample of advanced OECD countries. Interpreting relatively low loan-tovalue ratios as an...

I study economies where banks do not fully internalize the social costs of default, which distorts their lending decisions. In all these economies, a common general equilibrium effect leads to aggregate over-investment. As a result, under laissez-faire, crises are too frequent and too costly...

We study optimal government spending in a business cycle model with frictional unemployment. The Ramsey optimal policy is contrasted with a reference policy which would be first best in a frictionless economy. Results are: the Ramsey policy i) implies a higher steady state ratio of government...

How should monetary policy respond to changes in financial conditions? In this paper we consider a simple model where firms are subject to idiosyncratic shocks which may force them to default on their debt. Firms’ assets and liabilities are denominated in nominal terms and predetermined when...

In this paper, we explore the role of labor markets for monetary policy in the euro area in a New Keynesian model in which labor markets are characterized by search and matching frictions. We first investigate to which extent a more flexible labor market would alter the business cycle behaviour...

This paper considers a general model which allows for both deterministic and stochastic forms of seasonality, including fractional (stationary and nonstationary) orders of integration, and also incorporating endogenously determined structural breaks. Monte Carlo analysis shows that the suggested...

We study how total factor productivity (TFP), energy prices, and the Great Moderation are linked. First we estimate a joint stochastic process for the energy price and TFP and establish that until the second quarter of 1982, energy prices negatively affected productivity. This spillover has...

We propose multivariate classification as a statistical tool to describe business cycles. These cycles are often analyzed as a univariate phenomenon in terms of GNP or industrial net production ignoring additional information in other economic variables. Multivariate classification overcomes...