We merge detailed household level expenditure data from older households with historical local weather information. We then test for a heat or eat trade off: do households cut back on food spending to finance the additional cost of keeping warm during cold shocks? For households who cannot...

The stationarity of OECD real exchange rates over the period 1972-2008 is tested using a panel of twenty six member countries. The methodology followed stems from the need to meet several key concerns: (i) the identification of which panel members are stationary; (ii) the presence of...

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraints from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint which...

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of a transfer mechanism in a fiscally decentralized economy where local governments select their tax collection effort to maximize their lifetime utility. We consider a transfer rule that both punishes for the lack of efficiency in tax-collection and...

This paper assesses the effectiveness of monetary policy communication of the Central Bank of Turkey (CBT) by quantifying the information content of the policy statements released right after the monthly Monetary Policy Committee meetings. First, we quantify the signal regarding the next...

It has been argued that rare economic disasters can explain most asset pricing puzzles. If this is the case, perceived risk associated with a disaster in stock markets should be revealed in household portfolios. That is, the framework that solves these pricing puzzles should also generate...

We explore the effect of volatility in the federal funds market on the expectations hypothesis in money markets. We find that lower volatility in the bank funding markets market, all else equal, leads to a lower term premium and thus longer-term rates for a given setting of the overnight rate....

This paper examines the possibility of unit roots in the presence of endogenously determined multiple structural breaks in the total, female and male labour force participation rates (LFPR) for Australia, Canada and the USA. We extend the procedure of Gil-Alana (2008) for single structural break...

This paper examines the role of the extensive and intensive margins of work in the context of business cycles in emerging markets with a financial friction. The earlier literature analyzed the role of search frictions with only an extensive margin of work and showed that such a framework can...