The agrarian unrest in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century is examined. This unrest is often viewed as stemming from the inability of farmers to adapt to changing conditions in world agriculture. This hypothesis is tested in the context of a distributed lag supply function....

The identification of time-varying coefficient regression models is investigated using an analysis of the classical information matrix. The variable coefficients are characterized by autoregressive stochastic processes, allowing the entire model to be case in state space form. Thus the unknown...

An algorithm is presented which provides a complete solution to the optimal estimation problem for time-varying parameters when no proper prior distribution is specified. The key ideas involve a combination of the information-form Kalman filter with the two-filter interpretation of the optimal...

For decades credit rating agencies were viewed as trusted arbiters of creditworthiness and their ratings as important tools for managing risk. The common narrative is that the value of ratings was compromised by the evolution of the industry to a form where issuers pay for ratings. In this paper...

We consider the causes of international capital flows. Since capital flows are extremely persistent, we argue that their drivers must be persistent, too. We think the most compelling candidates are demographic trends, tfp differences and financial frictions. In this paper we focus primarily on...

We characterize the optimal sequential choice of monetary policy in economies with either nominal or indexed debt. In a model where nominal debt is the only source of time inconsistency, the Markov-perfect equilibrium policy implies the progressive depletion of the outstanding stock of debt,...

We develop an equilibrium search-matching model with risk-neutral agents and two-sided ex-ante heterogeneity Unemployment insurance has the standard effect of reducing employment, but also helps workers to get a suitable job. The predictions of our simple model are consistent with the...

We study the importance of financial markets for (un)employment fluctuations in a model with searching and matching frictions where firms issue debt under limited enforcement. Higher debt allows employers to bargain lower wages which in turn increases the incentive to create jobs. The...

Two observations suggest that financial globalization played an important role in the recent financial crisis. First, more than half of the rise in net borrowing of the U.S. nonfinancial sectors since the mid 1980s has been financed by foreign lending. Second, the collapse of the U.S. housing...

This paper investigates whether the international globalization of financial markets allows for significant cross-country risk-sharing at the business cycle frequency. We find that cross-country risk-sharing is still limited and this is unlikely to be the result of financial frictions that limit...