The paper focuses on short run macroeconomic dynamics triggered by demand side shocks. In particular, the paper analyzes, in a general equilibrium framework, the impact of transitory demand side shocks on the behavior of macroeconomic variables and examines the relevance of policy instruments...

On September 15-16, 2011 the annual Macroeconomics Research Workshop took place at Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Budapest, celebrating its 10th year of existence, out of which it was organized jointly with the CEPR for the 4th time. The workshop's title and main theme was ‘Fiscal Rebalancing, Public...

This paper provides an overview of the evolution of macroeconomic thought from 1936, the year John Maynard Keynes published his general theory of employment, interest and money to the year 2010. It explores the reasons for the extension of the business cycle during the postwar period. The paper...

In this article, three issues relating to leading composite indicators (LCI) are discussed: their importance, methods of estimation and uses by institutions worldwide. This discussion is utilised to provide lessons that could be learnt for the application of these indicators to the countries of...

This chapter develops a toolkit of neoclassical macroeconomic models, and applies these models to the US economy from 1929 to 2014. We first filter macroeconomic time series into business cycle and long-run components, and show that the long-run component is typically much larger than the...

This paper studies an agent-based model that bridges Keynesian theories of demandgeneration and Schumpeterian theories of technology-fueled economic growth. We employ the model to investigate the properties of macroeconomic dynamics and the impact of public polices on supply, demand and the...

The representation of the economic system, from a complexity perspective, focuses on interactions among heterogeneous agents in conditions of uncertainty. Heterogeneity entails asymmetric reactions to shocks and, through interaction mechanisms and feedback loops at micro, macro and meso level,...

In recent years the euro area has shown less resilience to the negative and largely OECD-wide common shocks than the English-speaking countries, but most of the smaller euro area countries have fared better than the large ones. This paper reviews policy issues that are important in fostering a...

What are the cyclical properties of U.S. state and local government fiscal policy? The budget surplus of local and, in particular, state governments is procyclical, smoothing disposable income and consumption of state residents. This happens over both short- and medium-term horizons. Procyclical...

This paper studies the role of automatic stabilizers using a sample of OECD countries and US states. We find that there is a strong and robust negative correlation between measures of government size and the volatility of output. This correlation is robust to the inclusion of a large set of...