I explore whether time-series methods exploiting the long-run equilibrium properties of the housing market might have detected the disequilibrium in U.S. house prices which pre-dated the Great Recession as it was building up. Based on real-time data, I show that a VAR in levels identified as in...

Presents the empirical data of business cycles and the theories that economists have developed to explain and prevent them, and considers case studies of recessions and depressions in the United States and internationally.

This paper argues that counter-cyclical liquidity hoarding by financial intermediaries may strongly amplify business cycles. It develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which banks operate subject to agency problems and funding liquidity risk in their inter- mediation activity....