The argument that policy risk, i.e., uncertainty about monetary and fiscal policy, has been holding back the economic recovery in the U.S. during the Great Recession has a large popular appeal. We analyze the role of policy risk in explaining business cycle fluctuations by using an estimated New...

A growing recent literature relies on a precautionary pricing motive embedded in representative agent DSGE models with sticky prices and wages to generate negative output effects of uncertainty shocks. We assess whether this model channel is consistent with the data. We build a New Keynesian...

Under fixed exchange rates, fiscal policy is an effective tool. According to classical views because it impacts the real exchange rate, according to Keynesian views because it impacts output. Both views have merit because the effects of government spending are asymmetric. A spending cut lowers...

Precautionary pricing and increasing markups in representative‐agent DSGE models with nominal rigidities are commonly used to generate negative output effects of uncertainty shocks. We assess whether this theoretical model channel is consistent with the data. Three things stand out. First,...

Releases of key macroeconomic indicators are closely watched by financial markets. We investigate the role of expectation dispersion and economic uncertainty for the stock-market reaction to indicator releases. We find that the strength of the financial market response to news decreases with the...

We provide evidence that expansionary fiscal policy lowers return differences between public debt and less liquid assets-the liquidity premium. We rationalize this finding in an estimated heterogeneous-agent New-Keynesian model with incomplete markets and portfolio choice, in which public debt...

We propose two simple diagnostic tests for spatial error autocorrelation and spatial lag dependence. The idea is to reformulate the testing problem such that the test statistics are asymptotically equivalent to the familiar LM test statistics. Specifically, our version of the test is based on a...

Central banks regularly communicate about financial stability issues, by publishing Financial Stability Reports (FSRs) and through speeches and interviews. The paper asks how such communications affect financial markets. Building a unique dataset, it provides an empirical assessment of the...