Pissarides (2009) has argued that the standard search model with sunk fixed matching costs increases unemployment volatility without introducing an unrealistic response of wages of new matches to productivity shocks. We revise the role of matching costs and show that when these costs are not...

In light of the huge cross-country differences in job losses during the recent crisis, we study how labor market duality - meaning the coexistence of "temporary" contracts with low firing costs and "permanent" contracts with high firing costs - affects labor market volatility. In a model of job...

We provide a dynamic extension of an economy with search on credit and labor markets (Wasmer and Weil, 2004). Financial frictions create volatility: they add an additional, almost acyclical, entry cost to procyclical job creation costs, thus increasing the elasticity of labor market tightness to...

This paper uses a battery of calibrated and estimated structural models to determine the causal drivers of the negative correlation between output and aggregate uncertainty. We find the transmission of uncertainty shocks to output is weak, while aggregate uncertainty endogenously responds to...

This paper explores the link between the leverage of the US financial sector, of households and of non-financial businesses, and real activity. We document that leverage is negatively correlated with the future growth of real activity, and positively linked to the conditional volatility of...

This paper explores the link between the leverage of the US financial sector, of households and non-financial businesses, and real activity. We document that leverage is negatively correlated with the future growth of real activity, and positively linked to the conditional volatility of future...

We consider the problem of testing for an omitted multiplicative long-term component in GARCH-type models. Under the alternative there is a two-component model with a short-term GARCH component that fluctuates around a smoothly time-varying long-term component which is driven by the dynamics of...

This paper constructs internationally consistent measures of macroeconomic uncertainty. Our econometric framework extracts uncertainty from revisions in data obtained from standardized national accounts. Applying our model to quarterly post-WWII real-time data, we estimate macroeconomic...

We offer improved dating of U.S. business cycle turning points both retrospectively and in real time. This improvement is made possible by augmenting existing Markov-switching dynamic factor models with additional information on stock return volatility. The model significantly improves...

This paper presents a new volatility model with time-varying volatility persistence (TVP) that is governed by the dynamics of an explanatory variable. We extend the GJR-GARCH model by introducing a time-varying GARCH coefficient that is linked to the variable in a parsimonious way using MIDAS...