This paper develops a 9-dimensional SVAR to investigate the sources of the U.S. business cycle. We extend the standard set of identified shocks to include unexpected changes in commodity prices. Our main result is that commodity price shocks are a very important driving force of macroeconomic...

This paper modifies the standard Mortensen-Pissarides model in order to explain the cyclical behavior of vacancies and unemployment. The modifications include strategic wage bargaining and convex labor adjustment costs. We find that this setup replicates the cyclical behavior of both labor...

This paper quantifies the impact of the Hartz reforms on matching efficiency, using monthly SOEP gross worker flows (1983-2009). We show that, until the early 2000s, close to 60% of changes in the unemployment rate are due to changes in the inflow rate (job separation). On the contrary, since...

This paper evaluates the relative importance of commodity price shocks in the U.S. business cycle. Therefore, we extend the standard set of business cycle shocks to include unexpected changes in commodity prices. The resulting SVAR shows that commodity price shocks are a very important driving...

The standard two-sector monetary business cycle model suffers from an important deficiency. Since durable good prices are more flexible than non-durable good prices, optimising households build up the stock of durable goods at low cost after a monetary contraction. Consequently, sectoral outputs...

This paper quantifies the impact of the Hartz reforms on matching efficiency, using monthly SOEP gross worker flows (1983-2009). We show that, until the early 2000s, close to 60% of changes in the unemployment rate are due to changes in the inflow rate (job separation). On the contrary, since...

The standard two-sector monetary business cycle model suffers from an important deficiency. Since durable good prices are more flexible than non-durable good prices, optimising households build up the stock of durable goods at low cost after a monetary contraction. Consequently, sectoral outputs...

The standard two-sector monetary business cycle model suffers from an important deficiency. Since durable good prices are more flexible than non-durable good prices, optimising households build up the stock of durable goods at low cost after a monetary contraction. Consequently, sectoral outputs...

This paper quantifies the impact of the Hartz reforms on matching efficiency, using monthly SOEP gross worker flows (1983-2009). We show that, until the early 2000s, close to 60% of changes in the unemployment rate are due to changes in the inflow rate (job separation). On the contrary, since...