The recent global recession requires policy makers to identify the relative importance of shock transmission mechanisms in each region and devise counter policy measures against future idiosyncratic shocks. In the last decade, world dynamics have changed considerably due to increased openness...

The paper uses quarterly GDP data for some 30 years up to and including 2001, to examine the identity and development of the European business cycle. Cycles are identified by using a band-pass filter version of the Hodrick-Prescott filter and affiliations are examined using clustering techniques...

Between 1890 and 2004, total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the United States has been strongly procyclical, while labor productivity growth has been mildly so. This chapter argues that these results are not simply a statistical artifact, as Mathew Shapiro and others have argued....

This paper traces the evolution of the concept of the cyclically adjusted budget from the 1930s to the present. The idea of balancing the budget over the cycle was first conceived in Sweden in the 1930s by the economists of the Stockholm School and was soon reinterpreted and incorporated into...

We compare the banking crises in 2008-09 and in the Great Depression, and analyse differences in the policy response to the two crises in light of the prevailing international monetary systems. The scale of the 2008-09 banking crisis, as measured by falls in international short-term indebtedness...

Modern growth theory derives mostly from Robert Solow's “A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth” (1956). Solow's own interpretation locates the origins of his “Contribution” in his view that the growth model of Roy Harrod implied a tendency toward progressive collapse of the...

Dopo la seconda guerra mondiale ci sono stati il regolamento degli aiuti concessi sulla base del Lend-lease, l'istituzione del sistema di Bretton Woods, il prestito alla Gran Bretagna e, infine, il piano Marshall. Riflettendo su quel periodo ho proposto una mia legge delle politiche economiche...

The possibility of crisis in the years ahead, as in the years that followed the first half of 1930, lies in private revulsion against the dollar − e.g. by Japanese insurance companies with their vast savings and limited investment opportunities at home, unmatched by public governmental efforts...

The U.S. today experiences an expanding financial economy. Investors benefit as common stock prices rise. Moreover, the finance industry grows relative to other industries (called “financialization”). But at the same time, the real economy lags. Workers' pay and job opportunities stagnate as...

This paper reviews recent developments in macro and finance on the relationship between financial risk and the real economy. We focus on three specific topics: the term structure of uncertainty, time variation - and specifically the long-term decline - in the variance risk premium, and time...