To examine the cyclical behavior of the skill-premium, this paper introduces implicit labor contracts in a DSGE model where production is characterized by capital-skill complementarity and the utilization of capital is endogenous. It is shown that this model can reproduce the observed cyclical...

We extend the Barro (2006) closed-economy model of the equity risk premium in the presence of extreme events ("disasters") to a two-country world. In this more general setting, both the output risk of rare disasters and the associated risk of a default on Government debt, can be diversified. The...

The paper sets out a monetary business cycle model with three alternative exchange technologies, the cash-only, shopping time, and credit production models. The goods productivity and money shocks affect all three models, while the credit model has in addition a credit productivity shock. The...

When indexation is endogenous price level targeting slightly adds to economic stability, contrary to widespread fears to the contrary. The aggregate supply curve flattens and the aggregate demand curve steepens, increasing stability in the face of supply shocks.

We show that the behaviour of the real exchange rates of the UK, Germany, France and Japan has been characterised by structural breaks which changed the adjustment mechanism. In the context of a Time-Varying Smooth Transition AutoRegressive of the kind introduced by Lundbergh et al (2003), we...

The advent of any earnings boost, such as provided by the introduction of a minimum wage, might be expected to reduce the supply of low paid individuals wanting to hold a second job. This paper uses difference-in-differences estimation on a panel of individuals matched across successive Labour...

This paper establishes the ability of a Real Business Cycle model to account for real exchange rate behaviour, using UK data. We show that a productivity simulation is capable of explaining initial real appreciation with subsequent depreciation to a lower steady state. The model is tested by the...

In a dataset of weekly observations over the period since 1990, the discount on UK closed-end mutual funds is shown to be nonstationary, but reverting to a nonzero long run mean. Although the long run discount could be explained by factors like management expenses etc., its short run...

We show that two models of the labor market, a Walrasian model and a labor contracting model, both have an approximate dynamic factor structure. We use this result to motivate our empirical approach to estimating the cyclical properties of real wages, which does not impose any structure between...

The positive relationship between bank CEO compensation and risk taking is a well established empirical fact. The global banking crisis has resulted in a chorus of demands to control banker's bonuses and thereby curtail their risk taking activities in the hope that the world can avoid a repeat...