The current account imbalances that are at the heart of the European sovereign debt crisis are often attributed to differences in price competitiveness. However, recent research suggests that domestic demand booms related to the financial cycle may have been more important. As this would have...

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 spread through different channels from its origin in the United States to large parts of the world. In this paper we explore the financial and the trade channel in a unified framework and quantify their relative importance for this transmission....

International real business cycle (IRBC) models predict a real exchange rate volatility that is much lower than the levels observed in the data. In this paper, we build a two-country IRBC model with both a traded and a non-traded goods sector, and calibrate it to UK-euro area (EA) data. We...

Business cycle correlations are state-dependent and higher in recessions than in expansions. In this paper, I suggest a mechanism to explain why this is the case. For this purpose, I build an international real business cycle model with occasionally binding constraints on capacity utilization...

There are two literature strands that explain stylized facts in emerging economies: the stochastic productivity trend or financial frictions. However, financial frictions are driven by both trend and stationary productivity shocks, thus distinguishing their impact from the direct role of output...

A large empirical literature has shown that countries that trade more with each other have more correlated business cycles. We show that previous estimates of this relationship are biased upward because they ignore common trade exposure to other countries. When we account for common trade...

Using a multi-level factor model, we estimate a global factor and country factors using the real macroeconomic variables of 71 countries from 1970 to 2018. The global factor successfully captures economic fluctuations in the world economy and primarily comoves with the business cycles of...

Countries in the world undergo turbulences in economic activity known as economic or business cycles. It is the length of the cycles that differs depending on the economy’s macroeconomic strengths in policy and implementation. Zimbabwe is one economy that has been faced by various episodes of...

Over the course of 2018, economic activity in major advanced foreign economies and emerging markets—including the Euro area and China—decelerated noticeably. In parallel, foreign growth projections for 2019 and 2020 were revised down, signaling potentially large headwinds for the U.S economy...

This paper quantifies the pass-through of a US dollar appreciation on trade variables and domestic financial conditions in a panel of 34 countries. Pass-through coefficients are highly shock-dependent: if the appreciation is driven by a US expansionary shock, the positive effects of stronger...