This paper shows that the explanation of the decline in the volatility of GDP growth since the mid-eighties is not the decline in the volatility of exogenous shocks but rather a change in their propagation mechanism.

Crises are triggered by the inherent uncertainty of the capitalist system. We represent this uncertainty in an open economy real business cycle model of the UK by including non-stationary productivity shocks. A random sequence of good or bad shocks will accumulate, producing euphorias and...

We investigate the time variation in the correlation between hours and technology shocks using a structural business cycle model. We propose an RBC model with a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function that allows for capital- and labor-augmenting technology shocks. We...

The extraordinary events surrounding the Great Recession have cast a considerable doubt on the traditional sources of macroeconomic instability. In their place, economists have singled out financial and uncertainty shocks as potentially important drivers of economic fluctuations. Empirically...

The paper investigates the sources of macroeconomic forecast errors in Germany. The predictions of the so-called "six leading" research institutes are analyzed. The forecast errors are discussed within an aggregate demand/supply scheme. Structural Vector Autoregressive Models are estimated to...

I study the role of shocks to beliefs combined with Bayesian learning in a standard equilibrium business cycle framework. By adapting ideas from Cogley and Sargent (2008b) to the general equilibrium setting, I am able to study how a prior belief arising from the Great Depression may have...

What drives aggregate fluctuations? In order to test recent theories on the importance of macroeconomic and firm-level shocks, I estimate a dynamic factor model with firm-level data. Each time series, the sales growth of a specific firm, is decomposed in an unobserved common macroeconomic...

This paper discusses interlinkages between Poland and the euro zone using a simple and agnostic econometric approach. Specifically, we estimate a trend-cycle VAR model using data for real and nominal variables, imposing powerful but uncontroversial assumptions that allow us to identify how...

In this paper we analyze the impact of uncertainty shocks on the Brazilian economy. We use a general equilibrium model in such a way that the transmission channels of the shocks could be identified and we solve the model using a third order approximation for the policy functions since lower...

This paper examines whether the Indian banking system is robust to withstand unexpected shocks from external and domestic macroeconomic factors. Demirguc et al (1998) Kaminsky et al (1999) demonstrate that banking crisis follow financial liberalization. India embarked financial deregulation from...