This paper investigates the role of fiscal and monetary policies over the aggregate EMU business cycle, with a specific focus on fiscal policies. We estimate large multipliers for public consumption and transfers. In spite of this, fiscal policies were substantially muted. This result is...

In this paper, I study how heterogeneity amongst agents affects the occurrence of expectation-driven asset price fluctuations in a pure exchange economy à la Lucas, with infinitely-lived households, under the hypothesis of spirit of capitalism. I consider heterogeneous households in terms of...

Spanish Abstract: El modelo de ciclos reales desarrollado en este artículo busca explicar el exceso de volatilidad del consumo relativo al producto en países de América Latina. El modelo incorpora dos características presentes en estas economías: altos niveles de desigualdad de ingreso y un...

This paper presents a simple new method for measuring 'wealth effects' on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the stickiness of consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption 'habits') to distinguish between immediate and eventual wealth effects. In U.S. data, we...

An assessment of the current state of housing viewed from the perspective of the slowly-recovering economy, coupled with valuations of the housing market, suggests there is a high likelihood of a double dip in housing prices. With current prices nearly 30 percent below their April 2006 peak, an...

This paper shows that the fiscal multiplier for purchases of durable and investment goods is very small - much smaller than the multiplier for nondurable goods. Standard models predict small durables multipliers because private sector purchases of durable goods are highly intertemporally...

This paper contributes to the permanent income hypothesis (PIH) and excess consumption smoothness debate in the context of fractional integration. We show that the excess consumption smoothness result is a consequence of the quarterly data frequency commonly employed in empirical work. In fact,...

I build a Heterogeneous Agents New Keynesian model with rich labor market dynamics. Workers search both off- and on-the-job, giving rise to a job ladder, where employed workers slowly move toward more productive and better paying jobs through job-to-job transitions, while negative shocks...

This paper studies the relationship between consumption and assets wealth based on the concept of cointegration. The analysis focuses on French data on the 1987 to 2006 period. This relationship is expressed in two ways: Marginal Propensity to Consume approach and Elasticity approach. Three...

Does increased savings result in a "paradox" or not? In this paper, a simple model highlights the assumptions sufficient to make thrift a paradox. It also shows what assumptions are necessary to make thrift a virtue