The gravity model has provided a tractable empirical framework to account for bilateral flows not only of manufactured goods, as in the case of merchandise trade, but also of financial flows. In particular, recent literature has emphasized the role of information costs in preventing larger...

The gravity model has provided a tractable empirical framework to account for bilateral flows not only of manufactured goods, as in the case of merchandise trade, but also of financial flows. In particular, recent literature has emphasized the role of information costs in preventing larger...

The gravity model has provided a tractable empirical framework to account for bilateral flows not only of manufactured goods, as in the case of merchandise trade, but also of financial flows. In particular, recent literature has emphasized the role of information costs in preventing larger...

This paper tells the story of how paper money evolved as a result of lending by banks. While lending commodity money requires holding large reserves of commodity money to ensure liquidity, issuing convertible paper money reduces these costs significantly. The paper also examines the possibility...

This paper studies the impact of shocks to banks’ balance sheets on real economic activity. The sample consists of 18 OECD countries observed annually from 1979 to 2003. Using the Rajan–Zingales method, I find that industries that depend more heavily on external finance respond more strongly...

This paper explains the emergence of liquidity traps in the aftermath of large-scale financial crises, as happened in the US 1930s, Japan 1990s and recently in the US and Europe. The paper introduces a new balance sheet channel that links equity capital to the risk-free interest rate. When...

This paper shows how particle filtering allows us to undertake likelihood-based inference in dynamic macroeconomic models. The models can be nonlinear and/or non-normal. We describe how to use the output from the particle filter to estimate the structural parameters of the model, those...

This paper compares two methods for undertaking likelihood-based inference in dynamic equilibrium economies: a sequential Monte Carlo filter proposed by Fernández-Villaverde and Rubio-Ramírez (2004) and the Kalman filter. The sequential Monte Carlo filter exploits the nonlinear structure of...

The dynamics of a linear (or linearized) dynamic stochastic economic model can be expressed in terms of matrices (A, B, C, D) that define a state-space system. An associated state space system (A, K, C, S) determines a vector autoregression (VAR) for observables available to an econometrician....

Recent work by Greenwood, Hercowitz, and Krusell (1997 and 2000) and Fisher (2003) has emphasized the importance of investment-specific technological change as a main driving force behind long-run growth and the business cycle. This paper shows how the growth model with investment-specific...