In this paper we explore whether the changing composition of output in response to technology shocks can play a significant role in the propagation of shocks over time. For this purpose we study two multisector RBC models, with two and three sectors. We find that, whereas the two-sector model...

In this paper the authors argue that a plausible reason why output and other major U.S. macroeconomic time series seem to follow a Markov switching process might be strictly related to expectations. The authors show that a time series of expectations of future output from the Survey of...

The growth of the mortgage market in recent years has raised the question of what effects, if any, the hedging of mortgage portfolios has on the behavior of long-term interest rates. This paper finds that the volatility of the ten-year swap rate implied by swaptions increases when the prepayment...

A striking feature of financial market behaviour in recent years has been the low level of price volatility over a wide range of financial assets and markets. The issue has attracted the attention of central bankers and financial regulators due to the potential implications for financial...

In this paper I present a business cycle model with one market sector that produces a standard good, and another that produces a non--market, or home, good. The model shows that business cycles can be driven only by self fulfilling expectations, although other shocks (e.g. to technology) may...

We construct an empirical measure of market frictions in the corporate market based on the difference between the corporate bond spread and the credit default swap spread for a large number of firms in a new, large dataset that we construct. Under fairly standard assumptions, the two spreads...