This paper aims at improving the measure of how much of the business cycle can be explained by technology innovations. For this, we measure the Solow residuals and calibrate a two country real business cycle model for 19 economies. A new procedure is used to determine the elasticity of...

International real business cycle models are not able to account for the high volatility of imports, exports, the trade balance and the terms of trade. By introducing exogenous exchange rate movements in addition to standard technological shocks, the model presented here comes much closer to...

Canada has now almost eliminated inflation, but it is still struggling with a slow productivity growth, high and persistent unemployment, and large fiscal and external deficits. This essay reviews the identifiables causes and consequences of this evolution, and draws a number of lessons for the...

Nous présentons une version simple du modèle dynamique d'équilibre général de la transmission internationale du cycle économique. Nous analysons sa solution et ses prédictions, et nous comparons ses prédictions avec les faits observés des covariations internationales des agrégats...

A vast literature analyzes the real effects of price-adjustment costs assuming that quantity adjustments are costless. In this paper, we analyze whether the presence of quantity-adjustments costs, which presumably are significant, change the traditional results on the impact of inflation. In...

We extend the Hansen and Prescott (1991) method for the numerical computation of equilibria of dynamic business cycle models in which there are two sets of agents who play a dynamic Stackelberg game. Such models have application to analysis of issues of optimal government policy in which the...

The return to sound fiscal policy after the high budget deficits of the 1980s and early 1990s has been hailed by many as the Clinton administration's most important achievement. In this article, we evaluate post-war, US fiscal policy using an extension of Barro's (1979) tax-smoothing model,...

We explore the implications of endogenous credit market imperfections for the relationship between property crime and the process of economic development. In the initial stages of development, property crime rises as the opportunities to gain from illegal activities expand. In later stages,...

In this paper, we show that in a dynamic general equilibrium economy, the presence of moral hazard need not induce large cuts in optimal unemployment insurance benefits when agents are asked to vote on these benefits. We find that it takes a quite large proportion of "shirkers" to bend the...

Bank loans are more available and cheaper for new and small businesses in the U.S. in areas with highly concentrated banks than in areas with highly competitive banks. To explain this fact, we analyze banks' decisions to screen the project and their subsequent competition in loan provisions. It...