This paper proposes a theory of twin banking-currency crises in which both fundamentals and self-fulfilling beliefs play crucial roles. Fundamentals determine whether crises will occur. Self-fulfilling beliefs determine when they occur. The fundamental that causes twin crises' is government...

High-interest-rate currencies tend to appreciate relative to low-interest-rate currencies. We argue that adverse-selection problems between participants in foreign exchange markets can account for this 'forward premium puzzle.' The key feature of our model is that the adverse selection problem...

Existing Real Business Cycle (RBC) models assume that the key impulses to business cycles are stochastic technology shocks. RBC analysts typically measure these technology shocks by the Solow residual. This paper assesses the sensitivity of inference based on Solow residual accounting to labor...

We develop and implement a limited information diagnostic strategy for assessing the plausibility of monetary business cycle models. Our strategy focuses on a model's ability to reproduce empirical estimates of an actual economy's response to monetary policy shocks. A key input to this...

This paper analyzes the role of variable capital utilization rates in propagating shocks over the business cycle. To this end we formulate and estimate an equilibrium business cycle model in which cyclical capital utilization rates are viewed as a form of factor hoarding. We find that variable...

This paper investigates whether there are simple versions of the permanent income hypothesis which are consistent with the aggregate U.S. consumption and output data. Our analysis is conducted within the confines of a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of aggregate real output, investment,...

Standard representative-agent models have difficulty in accounting for the weak correlation between stock returns and measurable fundamentals, such as consumption and output growth. This failing underlies virtually all modern asset-pricing puzzles. The correlation puzzle arises because these...

We develop and estimate a general equilibrium model that accounts for key business cycle properties of macroeconomic aggregates, including labor market variables. In sharp contrast to leading New Keynesian models, wages are not subject to exogenous nominal rigidities. Instead we derive wage...

We examine the empirical properties of the payoffs to two popular currency speculation strategies: the carry trade and momentum. We review three possible explanations for the apparent profitability of these strategies. The first is that speculators are being compensated for bearing risk. The...

We argue that the government-spending multiplier can be much larger than one when the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate binds. The larger is the fraction of government spending that occurs while the nominal interest rate is zero, the larger is the value of the multiplier. After...