An increase in the wage share has contradictory effects on the subaggregates of aggregate demand. Private consumption expenditures ought to increase because wage incomes typically are associated with higher consumption propensities than capital incomes. Investment expenditures ought to be...

Albania has experienced a rapid transition from a centrally planned economy to a mixed economy since the fall of communism in 1989. Policy changes, trade liberalization, and privatization have come about at a rapid pace, allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade to become...

What determines investment is a much analysed policy question all around the world. Growth and previous investments are the primary variable used to analyse current investment. But there is much difference in opinions among economists regarding which policy instrument should be emphasised more...

The authors solve the IS puzzle for the G7 countries. They find that five of the G7 countries have the expected significant negative relationship between the output gap and the real-rate gap; the time series of the remaining two show material deviation from expected IS-curve behavior. The...

This testimony makes three main points. First, income volatility, especially when it involves income declines, imposes significant hardships on American families. It heightens stress about finances and may increase household living expenses. These hardships are most pronounced for middle-and...

This study contributes to the literature by identifying the most appropriate factor to detect and measure Financial Cycles, similar to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Business Cycles. Four financial variables were included in the study: Credit, House Prices, Share Prices and Interest Rates. The...

Is real investment fully determined by fundamentals or is it sometimes affected by stock market misvaluation? We introduce three new tests that: measure the reaction of investment to sales shocks for firms that may be overvalued; use Fama-MacBeth regressions to determine whether overinvestment...

When investment is irreversible, theory suggests that firms will be "reluctant to invest." This reluctance creates a wedge between the discount rate guiding investment decisions and the standard Jorgensonian user cost (adjusted for risk). We use the intertemporal tradeoff between the benefits...

We review the labor market implications of recent real-business-cycle models that successfully replicate the empirical equity premium. We document the fact that all models considered in this survey with the exception of Boldrin, Christiano, and Fisher (2001) imply a negative correlation of...

This paper describes an equilibrium life-cycle model of housing where nonconvex adjustment costs lead households to adjust their housing choice infrequently and by large amounts when they do so. In the cross-sectional dimension, the model matches the wealth distribution; the age profiles of...