We inject aggregate uncertainty — risk and ambiguity — into an otherwise standard business cycle model and describe its consequences. We find that increases in uncertainty generally reduce consumption, but they do not account, in this model, for either the magnitude or the persistence of the...

Even before the events of the past few years, economists and policy makers were musing about the apparent contradiction between globalization, as it is generally understood, and the seemingly different paths in overall economic activity taken by the emerging and more mature economies of the...

The paper deals with assessing the common trends in business cycle similarity and convergence in Europe. The main goal of the paper is to identify common cyclical co-movements and trends in convergence among the European countries so that the emerging European business cycle could be identified....

This paper intends to evaluate empirically the impact of reduced trade barriers and increased trade on the synchronization of business cycles. It draws on Frankel and Rose (1998) who reassessed the Mundellian criteria on Optimum Currency Areas (OCAs) and considered their application to be...

This paper studies the cyclicality of human capital accumulation by using a lifecycle RBC model with two types of heterogeneity: age and productivity in learning. Results show that individuals invest more in human capital during economic downturns. In particular, schooling acts as a buffer...

This paper studies the role of extensive and intensive margins of labor adjustment overbusiness cycle in Japan. We find that the intensive margin accounts for much of total hours worked variation, and its contribution to the fluctuation of total hours worked is about 77%. This result is in sharp...

We write model that considers both households’ and firms’ credit frictions. Firms’ credit is modeled by the traditional financial accelerator à la Bernanke et al (1999). Households that borrow funds face interest rates that increase with their debt, as in Curdia and Woodford (2010). We...

The so-called Beveridge curve illustrates the relation between the unemployment rate and the job vacancy rate. Regarding the euro area, the rise in the unemployment rate and the increase in recruitment difficulties since the 2008-2009 recession indicate a risk of a higher level of structural...

In an inflation targeting regime, the best possible knowledge of demand-side inflationary pressure is of priority importance for monetary policy. In applied macroeconomic models, this is traditionally represented by the actual position of the cyclical component of GDP (the output gap). This...

This paper explores implications of non-separable preferences with home production for international business cycles. Home production induces substitution effects that break the link between market consumption and its marginal utility and help explain several stylized facts of the open economy....