Identifying assumptions need to be imposed on dynamic models before they can be used to analyze the dynamic effects of economically interesting shocks. Often, the assumptions are only rich enough to identify a set of solutions. This paper considers two types of restrictions on the structural...

Uncertainty about the future rises in recessions. But is uncertainty a source of business cycles or an endogenous response to them, and does the type of uncertainty matter? To address these questions, we propose a novel shock-restricted identification strategy. We find that sharply higher...

It is well known that the covariance structure of the data alone is not enough to identify an SVAR, and the conventional approach is to impose restrictions on the parameters of the model based on a priori theoretical considerations. This paper suggests that much can be gained by requiring the...

Uncertainty about the future rises in recessions. But is uncertainty a source of business cycles or an endogenous response to them, and does the type of uncertainty matter? We propose a novel SVAR identification strategy to address these questions via inequality constraints on the structural...

Two potential driving forces of house price fluctuations are commonly cited: credit conditions and beliefs. We posit some simple empirical calculations using direct measures of credit conditions and beliefs to consider their potentially distinct roles in house price fluctuations at the aggregate...

The last 20 years have been marked by a sharp rise in international demand for U.S. reserve assets, or safe stores-of-value. What are the welfare consequences to U.S. households of these trends, or of a reversal? In a lifecycle model with aggregate and idiosyncratic risks, the young and oldest...

The last 20 years have been marked by a sharp rise in international demand for U.S. reserve assets, or safe stores-of-value. We argue that these trends in international capital flows are likely to be a boon for some (by a lot) but a bane for others (by less). Conversely, a sell-off of foreign...