This paper applies the single-index dynamic factor model developed by Stock and Watson (1991) to construct current-quarter estimates of economic activity in Hong Kong. The Hang Seng index, a residential property price index, retail sales and total exports are used as coincident indicators....

I study the welfare cost of business cycles in a complete-markets economy where some people are more risk averse than others. Relatively more risk-averse people buy insurance against aggregate risk, and relatively less risk-averse people sell insurance. These trades reduce the welfare cost of...

In this paper we provide an estimate of the likelihood of conflict between the federal government and the Bundesbank for the 1989–1998 period. We rely on a novel proxy for the impact of public communication by Bundesbank officials on the probability of conflict, in addition to interest rate,...

In order to study the propagation mechanism of business cycles, in particular to investigate how the intensity of competition affects market structure and output persistence over business cycles, this paper presents a real business-cycle model with imperfect competition and increasing returns to...

This paper introduces the concept of relative demand shocks into a multi-sector dynamic general equilibrium model. Relative demand shocks change the instantaneous structure of preferences. Under relative demand shocks consumer tastes randomly shift across different commodities, as manifested by...

This paper presents an empirically testable two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model for the United States economy that admits technology and non-technology shocks. Long-run identification restrictions further distinguish the impact of each shocks over the originating sector (i.e. as a...

This paper examines a mechanism of liquidity-preference fluctuations caused by people's learning behavior. % about the frequency of a liquidity shock. When observing a financial shock, they rationally update their belief so that the subjective probability of encountering it again is higher,...

In this paper we reconcile two opposing views about the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption (EIS). Empirical studies using aggregate consumption data typically find that the EIS is close to zero (Hall, 1988). Calibrated models designed to match growth and fluctuations facts...

In aggregate U.S. data, exogenous shocks to labor productivity induce highly persistent and hump-shaped responses to both the vacancy- unemployment ratio and employment. We show that the standard version of the Mortensen-Pissarides matching model fails to replicate this dynamic pattern due to...

We argue that the role played by output-composition changes on the decline in US output volatility has been incorrectly assessed in the recent literature. We obtain that shifts across broad sectors in the economy account for about thirty-percent of the volatility decline since the 1950’s.