In this paper, I analyze the causes of the prolonged slowdown of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and find that the stagnation of investment, especially private fixed investment, was the primary culprit. I then investigate the causes of the stagnation of household consumption during the 1990s...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of business sentiment indicators for forecasting developments in the Chinese real economy. We use data on diffusion indices collected by the People's Bank of China for forecasting industrial production, retail sales and exports. Our bivariate vector...

Im Sommer 2007 setzt sich das weltwirtschaftliche Wachstum mit nur wenig verlangsamtem Tempo fort. Zwar ist die Dynamik in den USA schwächer als in den Vorjahren, jedoch blieb die Konjunktur in allen anderen großen Wirtschaftsräumen kräftig, vor allem in den Entwicklungs- und...

We study the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the probability and duration of economic recessions in 10 major European Union countries over the period 1987Q2-2021Q1. We find that economic policy uncertainty results in not only a higher probability of economic recessions but also longer...

The Phillips curve has been at the same time an econometric object, a trade-off curve and an analytical equation representing the aggregate supply in a macro model. The paper considers these aspects as they emerge from the so called new “neoclassical synthesis'' models used for monetary...

This paper documents the structure and properties of the Canadian Policy Analysis Model (CPAM). CPAM is designed to provide a reasonably complete representation of the Canadian macro economy. It is a one-domestic-good, small-open-economy model, which features an endogenous supply side,...

With the help of two examples, we illustrate the usefulness of agent-based models as a tool for economic policy design. In our first example, we apply a financial market model in which the order flow of speculators, relying on technical and fundamental analysis, generates intricate price...