U.S. presidential approval is a topic that has long attracted the interest of political pundits, journalists, candidates and voters. Academic studies of presidential approval have been dominated by political scientists while economists have focused on the president’s political party and...

U.S. presidential approval is a topic that has long attracted the interest of political pundits, journalists, candidates and voters. Academic studies of presidential approval have been dominated by political scientists while economists have focused on the president’s political party and...

According to the author the US economy is not in such a bad condition as usually depicted, but the relapse into a severe recession and uncertainty after thirty years of uninterrupted upward movements has been shocking. President Ford, although facing a self-assertive Congress, with his gradual...

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic volatility on non-financial firms' cash holding behavior. Using an augmented cash buffer-stock model, we demonstrate that an increase in macroeconomic volatility will cause the cross-sectional distribution of firms' cash-to-asset ratios to...

There is no consensus about the causes of the reduction in business cycle volatility seen in many major economies over the last decade. Using stylised models of the economies of the US, Euro area, UK and Japan, we argue that economic stability has been fostered by improved monetary policy and by...

The cyclicality of real wages has important implications for the validity of competing business cycle theories. However, the empirical evidence on the aggregate level is inconclusive. Using a threshold vector autoregressive model for the US and Germany to condition the relationship between real...

Using microdata for adults from the 1987-2000 years of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, I show that smoking and height-adjusted weight decline during temporary economic downturns while leisure-time physical activity rises. The drop in tobacco use occurs disproportionately among...