In this paper, we take the opportunity to examine wealth portfolios for the middle class and for various corresponding socio-economic groups. We identify the rich, at the top of the income distribution, the middle class (middle 80 percent) and the poor (bottom 20 percent). We examine several...

This paper provides an empirical comparison of the sticky-price and the sticky information Phillips curves on the basis of second moments of inflation for six countries, the US, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan. We evaluate the models' abilities to match empirical second moments of...

This paper investigates the accuracy of point and density forecasts of four dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models for output growth, inflation and the interest rate. The model parameters are estimated and forecasts are derived successively from historical U.S. data vintages...

The paper considers an elementary New-Keynesian three equation model and compares its Bayesian estimation to the results from the method of moments (MM), which seeks to match a finite set of the model-generated second moments of in ation, output and the interest rate to their empirical...

The detection of business-cycle turning points is usually performed with non-linear discrete-regime models such as binary dependent variable (e.g., probit or logit) or Markov-switching methods. The probit model has the drawback that the continuous underlying target variable is discretized, with...

The paper considers two rival models referring to the new macroeconomic consensus: a standard three-equations model of the New-Keynesian variety and dynamic adjustments of a business and an inflation climate in an `Old-Keynesian' tradition. Over the two subperiods of the Great Inflation and...

Did the increase in counterparty risk perception in the interbank market since autumn 2007 contribute to the severe contraction of the US economy? To address this question we introduce interbank market uncertainty in a DSGE model with frictional financial intermediation. Interbank uncertainty is...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that product creation is procyclical and it occurs largely within existing fi rms. Motivated by these findings, the current paper investigates the role of intrafi rm product scope choice in a general equilibrium economy with oligopolistic producers. We show...

In this paper I use the predictive distribution of the back-, now- and forecasts obtained with a mixed-frequency Bayesian VAR (MF-BVAR) to provide a real-time assessment of the probability of a recession in the euro area for the period from 2003 until 2013. Using a dataset that consists of 135...

The degree of comovement of economic activity across states or regions is an issue of utmost importance to policymakers. Asymmetric business cycles are often seen as an impediment to the formation of a common currency area. However, it has been argued that a common monetary policy in itself...