Dramatic changes in the relative prices of goods in international trade have accompanied, and indeed preceded, the global crisis. These changes are reflected in the terms of trade of individual countries and in the relative prices of goods within those countries. Asia-Pacific countries are...

We contribute to the task of identifying trends and cycles in energy prices by examining very long series of prices for coal and oil, going back to 1650 in the case of coal and 1859 in the case of oil. We find annual rates of increase in real price of greater than two percent are found for coal...

This paper investigates the welfare costs of business cycles in a heterogeneous agent, overlapping generations economy which is distinguished by idiosyncratic labor market risk. Aggregate variation arises both in terms of aggregate productivity shocks and countercyclical variation in the...

This paper identifies America's first Great Moderation, a period from 1841-1856 of unbroken economic expansion and low volatility comparable to the Great Moderation of the 1980s-2000s. This moderation occurred despite a lack of central banks, low governmental spending, and barriers to interstate...

This study attempts to determine the degree to which the state of the macroeconomy can be used to create a mutual fund investment strategy that consistently outperforms the S&P 500. By quantifying how systematic economic factors affect the relative performance of different fund strategies...

This paper studies the dynamics of endogenous business cycles and exchange rate volatility in a small open economy. Without market imperfections, domestic price and wage adjustments respond sluggishly to disequilibrium situations on real domestic markets while prices on international capital...

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Color poster with graphs and tables.

To counter the effect of recessions on workers, Congress has passed legislation to spur job creation through increased spending on public works (infrastructure) and public service programs, revenue sharing with state governments, and employment tax credits. Although the economic stimulus measure...

En este documento se propone un marco empírico para medir el grado de debilidad de la economía mundial en tiempo real. Esta metodología se basa en modelos de factores no lineales, que son diseñados para inferir recesiones de magnitudes heterogéneas, y relacionados con las principales...