The theoretical literature on business cycles predicts a positive investment response to productivity improvements. In this work we question this prediction from theoretical and empirical standpoints. We fiÂ…rst show that a negative short-term response of investment to a positive technology...

We apply a three-tier hierarchical model of regulation, developed along the lines of Laffont and Tirole’s (1993), to an adverse selection problem in the corporate bond market. The bank brings the bonds to the market and informs the potential buyers about the bonds’ risk; a unique...

The debate on the response of hours worked after productivity improvements is still an open issue in the theoretical and empirical literature. In this work we show that, once conditional correlations are taken into account, both hours and investment decline temporarily following a positive...

By introducing search and matching frictions in both the labor and the credit markets into a cash in advance New Keynesian DSGE model, we provide a novel explanation of the incomplete pass-through from policy rates to loan rates. We show that this phenomenon is ineradicable if banks possess some...

Inequality in South Africa is the enduring legacy of racial discrimination. We use a dynamic perspective to show the linkages between persistent effects of discrimination in the labour market and the efficacy of redistributive fiscal policy in reducing inequality. We present a machine-learning...