We take a structural approach to assessing the empirical importance of shocks to the supply of bank-intermediated credit in affecting macroeconomic fluctuations. First, we develop a theoretical model to show how credit supply shocks can be transmitted into disruptions in the production economy....

This paper is a first attempt to study the size and development of the shadow economies of 157 countries over 1999 to 2013. Using a MIMIC model, we find that higher tax and regulatory burden, unemployment and self-employment rates are drivers of the shadow economy, meaning that an increase of...

This paper proposes a measure of real-time inflation expectations based on metadata, i.e., data about data, constructed from internet search queries performed on the search engine Google. The forecasting performance of the Google Inflation Search Index (GISI) is assessed relative to 37 other...

When estimating the parameters of a process, researchers have to choose a reference unit of time (unit period). If the unit period is set equal to the sampling interval, then the parameter estimates will not necessarily be comparable across data sets with different sampling frequencies. However,...

As the novel coronavirus progressed from Wuhan to various parts of the globe, governments were faced with a tradeoff: to go into lockdown to save lives but hurt the economy, or stay open to save the economy but lose lives. At the time, those in favour of the lockdown had empirical data to show...

Lending standards are a direct measure of credit conditions. We use the micro data merged from three separate sources to construct this measure and document that an uncertain macroeconomic outlook, rather than banks' balance sheet positions, was an important reason that a majority of banks...

This study focused on the choice of functional forms and their parametrization (estimation of free parameters and calibration of other parameters) in the context of CGE models. Various types of elasticities are defined, followed by a presentation of the functional forms most commonly used in...

In recent years, the international community has been increasing its efforts to reduce the human footprint on air pollution and global warming. Total CO2 emissions are a key component of global emissions, and as such, they are closely monitored by national and supranational entities. This study...

GDP is a closely watched indicator of the current health of the economy and an important tool of economic policy. It has been called one of the great inventions of the 20th Century. It is not, however, a persuasive indicator of individual wellbeing or economic progress. There have been calls to...

We investigate the size and trends of the informal economy (IE) in ten Balkan nations from 1996-2021 using the MIMIC model. Our findings reveal a consistent decline in the IE in our sample, albeit it remains substantial, exceeding 29% (of GDP) in 2021. We also explore the impact of the COVID-19...