The author proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector into a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with a financial accelerator. He evaluates the role of the banking sector in the transmission and propagation of the real effects of aggregate shocks, and...

Housing wealth is a large component of total wealth and plays an important role in aggregate business cycles. In this paper, we explore data on real house price cycles at the aggregate level and city level for the United States and Canada. Using a panel of 137 cities, we examine the duration,...

We analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the United States, based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of different economic indicators. Comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a realtime subjective measure of uncertainty...

This paper examines the business cycle linkages that propagate industry-specific business cycle shocks throughout the economy in a way that (sometimes) generates aggregated cycles. The transmission of sectoral business cycles is modelled through a multivariate Markov-switching model, which is...

This paper presents a new testing method for the scapegoat model of exchange rates that aims to tighten the link between the theory on scapegoats and its empirical implementation. This new testing method consists of a number of steps. First, the exchange rate risk premium, the unobserved...

The financial crisis of 200709 has highlighted the importance of developments in financial conditions for real economic activity. The authors estimate the effect of current and past shocks to financial variables on U.S. GDP growth by constructing two growthbased financial conditions indexes...

We use internationally comparable household-level data for ten euro area economies and the United States to investigate cross-country differences in debt holdings and the potential of debt overhang. U.S. households have the highest prevalence of both collateralized and non-collateralized debt,...

Using a novel dataset for the US states, this paper examines whether household debt and the protracted debt deleveraging help explain the dismal performance of US consumption since 2007, in the aftermath of the housing bubble. By separating the concepts of deleveraging and debt overhang - a flow...

We examine the dynamic effects of credit shocks using a large data set of U.S. economic and financial indicators in a structural factor model. The identified credit shocks, interpreted as unexpected deteriorations of credit market conditions, immediately increase credit spreads, decrease rates...

We analyze the interaction between credit and asset prices in the transmission of shocks to the real economy. We estimate a Markov switching VAR for the euro area and the US, including additionally GDP, CPI and a short-term interest rate. We find evidence for two distinct states in both regions....