There is considerable disagreement in the empirical macro literature as to the degree of returns to scale in U.S. production. While many studies find evidence of a small degree of increasing returns, standard errors are typically large. This issue is of importance for assessing the possibility...

It is theoretically possible that non-fundamental idiosyncratic shocks to agents’ rational expectations are a source of economic fluctuations. Studies using data on consumer and investor sentiment suggest that this is indeed a significant source of fluctuations. We present the results of a...

We present a new composite leading indicator of economic activity in mainland China, estimated using a dynamic factor model. Our leading indicator is constructed from three series: exports, a real estate climate index, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange index. These series are found to share a...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

We present a new composite leading indicator of economic activity in mainland China, es-timated using a dynamic factor model. Our leading indicator is constructed from three se-ries: exports, a real estate climate index, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange index. These series are found to share a...

A coincident business cycle indicator for the Milan area is built on the basis of a monthly industrial survey carried out by Assolombarda, the largest territorial entrepreneurial association in Italy. The indicator is extracted from three time series concerning the production level and the...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

We estimate a medium scale DSGE model for the Euro Area to gain intuition on the importance of Limited Asset Market Participation (LAMP). Our results suggest that LAMP is sizeable (39% of households over the 1993-2012 sample) and important to understand EMU business cycle, especially, in the...

Este artículo estudia la interacción entre el ciclo económico y el mercado del crédito. Nuestra evidencia señala que los períodos de expansión económica gatillan en el mediano plazo, primero, aumentos de la cartera vencida, y luego, reducciones del crédito. Interpretamos este fenómeno...