This model adds to the standard neoclassical model of business fluctuations by introducing a more realistic capital structure problem, where firms have to balance the tax benefits of debt with the costs of potential financial distress.Therefore, firms solve a dynamic problem with both an...

This paper extends the literature on the information content of financial variables with respect to future economic growth. It shows that variables originating from both the equity market and the bond market in Switzerland are useful indicators for forecasting the Swiss business cycle. In...

The profile of the successor to the IS-LM model starts to emerge; the identifying process and the nature of the objective one is groping for are now relatively clear. With the help of three specific experiments, a few of the likely ingredients of the new neo-classical synthesis are derived. In...

After discussing the general characteristics that the successor to IS-LM should possess, this essay argues that the business cycle research program initiated by Kydland and Prescott (1992) is beginning to show a promising capacity at incorporating a broad range of modeling features into a...

The objective of this paper is to provide, in the context of a dynamic general equilibrium model, an answer to the following five questions: 1. To what extent does an economy subject to regular variations in labor productivity growth differ from one where labor productivity is constant? 2.What...

We discuss the extent to which the expectation of a rare event, not present in the usual postwar sample data, but not rationally excludable from the set of possibilities - the peso problem -, can effect the equilibrium behavior of rational agents and the characteristics of market equilibrium. To...