This paper considers the estimation of approximate dynamic factor models when there is temporal instability in the factor loadings. We characterize the type and magnitude of instabilities under which the principal components estimator of the factors is consistent and find that these...

BACKGROUND: The PURE study was established to investigate associations between social, behavioural, genetic, and environmental factors and cardiovascular diseases in 17 countries. In this analysis we compare the age, sex, urban/rural, mortality, and educational profiles of the PURE participants...

Monetary policy affects the real economy in part through its effects on financial institutions. High frequency event studies show the introduction of unconventional monetary policy in the winter of 2008-09 had a strong, beneficial impact on banks and especially on life insurance companies. I...

We study the e¢ ciency properties of a dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium, macroeco- nomic model with monopolistic competition and …rm entry subject to sunk costs, a time-to-build lag, and exogenous risk of …rm destruction. Under inelastic labor supply and linearity of produc- tion in...

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across eighteen advanced economies over the past forty years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To...

We review the main identification strategies and empirical evidence on the role of expectations in the New Keynesian Phillips curve, paying particular attention to the issue of weak identification. Our goal is to provide a clear understanding of the role of expectations that integrates across...

This paper examines the ex-post performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that obtained small business credit scoring (SBCS) loans, using a unique Japanese firm?bank matched dataset. The ex-post probability of default after the SBCS loan was provided significantly increased for SMEs...

We describe the relationship between socio-economic status and current bidi or cigarette smoking among Indian men aged ?15 years. The prevalence of bidi smoking was 13.7% (95%CI 13.3?14.1) and that of cigarette smoking was 6.3% (95%CI 6.1?6.6). bidi smoking was concentrated among the...