Is there a link between loose monetary conditions, credit growth, house price booms, and financial instability? This paper analyzes the role of interest rates and credit in driving house price booms and busts with data spanning 140 years of modern economic history in the advanced economies. We...

In recent years, an increasing number of countries have began anchoring their fiscal policy frameworks in terms of rules that target the cyclically adjusted or structural (as opposed to actual) balance in an effort to overcome problems of procyclicality and fiscal volatility. The logic for doing...

This paper studies the question of the economic scale of financial institutions. We show that banks actively smooth book equity by adjusting payouts to achieve a desired trajectory of book equity. The countercyclical nature of net payouts of financial institutions leads to procyclical book...

This paper empirically investigates and theoretically reflects on the generality of the "stylized facts" discussed in business cycle analysis. Using OECD data for 1960 - 2010, the duration of business cycles as well as three models capturing core macroeconomic relations are estimated: based on...

Empirical evidence concerning the reasons for differences in unemployment dynamics within the group of OECD countries is far from being conclusive. Using a sample of 20 OECD countries over the period 1985-2011, we analyse the impact of business cycles and labour market institutions on total...

This paper examines the relationship between cash holdings and business cycles between 1976 and 2012, with a primary emphasis on how cash holdings vary during the business cycle and specifically during recessions. Using several different quarterly data sets, findings confirm that cash holdings...