The recent financial crisis has witnessed the importance of the housing markets in macroeconomic fluctuations. We investigate the correlation between housing dynamics and the business cycle for a variety of countries. Our empirical results confirm the two daunting facts faced by lots of...

Are uncertainty shocks a major source of business cycle fluctuations? This paper studies theeffect of a mean preserving shock to the variance of aggregate total factor productivity(macro uncertainty) and to the dispersion of entrepreneurs' idiosyncratic productivity (microuncertainty) in a...

Are uncertainty shocks a major source of business cycle fluctuations? This paper studies the effect of a mean preserving shock to the variance of aggregate total factor productivity (macro uncertainty) and to the dispersion of entrepreneurs' idiosyncratic productivity (micro uncertainty) in a...

We develop an equivalence between the equilibrium effects of incomplete information and those of two behavioral distortions: myopia, or extra discounting of the future; and anchoring of current behavior to past behavior, as in models with habit persistence or adjustment costs. We show how these...