This paper has two sources: One is my own research in three broad areas: business cycles, economic measurement and social choice. In all of these fields I attempted to apply the basic precepts of the scientific method as it is understood in the natural sciences. I found that my effort at using...

We study the Beaudry and Portier (2006)-hypothesis of delayed-technology diffusion and news-driven business cycles. For German data on TFP and stock prices we find qualitatively similar empirical evidence. Quantitatively, however, an impulse response analysis suggests that a substantial part of...

This paper examines the degree of trade integration and business cycle synchronisation between eight Balkan countries and the Euro area over the period 2000:1-2011:4. The main findings are that Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia exhibit a high level of openness relative to...

This paper analyzes the performance of the monthly economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index in predicting recessionary regimes of the (quarterly) U.S. GDP. In this regard, the authors apply a mixed-frequency Markov-switching vector autoregressive (MF-MS-VAR) model, and compare its in-sample and...

Studies often conclude that the proposed Southern African Development Community monetary union would be disastrous and not optimal for all member countries. This is because of the observed low, and sometimes negative business cycle correlation amongst member countries. However, it has been...

The European post-communist countries that have integrated into the European Union are emerging market economies. However, their short-run economic performance does not correspond to the observed business cycles of other global emerging markets. The business cycles of the studied countries are...

Optimal fiscal policy is expected to behave in a countercyclical manner to stabilize economies during business cycles. In particular, the public expenditure-to-GDP ratio should go up during recessions and down during expansions, while the public revenues-to-GDP ratio should move in the opposite...

This paper studies the theoretical effects of changes in disaster risk on macroeconomic variables in five Latin American economies. It compares country-specific variants of the New Keynesian model with disaster risk developed by Isoré and Szczerbowicz (2017). Countries with higher price...

In this paper we investigate the quantitative importance of collective bargaining agreements for the observed fluctuations in Bulgarian labor markets. Following Maffezzoli (2001), we introduce a monopoly union into a real-business-cycle model with government sector. We calibrate the model to...

We introduce investment-speci fic technological change (ISTC) into an otherwise standard real-business-cycle setup with a government sector. We calibrate the model to Bulgarian data for the period following the introduction of the currency board arrangement (1999-2018). We then investigate the...