We analyze the impact of short-run economic fluctuations on age-specific mortality using Bayesian time series econometrics and contribute to the debate on the procyclicality of mortality. For the first time, we examine the differing consequences of economic changes for all individual age...

This paper presents insights on U.S. business cycle volatility since 1867 de- rived from diffusion indices. We employ a Bayesian dynamic factor model to obtain aggregate and sectoral economic activity indices. We find a remarkable increase in volatility across World War I, which is reversed...

We examine the effects of negative news reporting on companies' self-assessment of their business situation. We compare survey data in the manufacturing sector in Switzerland with thousands of newspaper articles which we scan for particular keywords. Simple OLS regressions do not show a...

The research work presented below addresses the possible concern of central bank independence through the development and application of econometric models. The complexity of the modelling has allowed a step further in corroborating that financial independence is not only linked to the...

We leverage the small open economy Switzerland as a testing ground for basic premises of macroeconomic models of endogenous information acquisition, using tailored surveys of firms and households. First, we show that firms perceive a greater exposure to exchange rate movements than households,...

We leverage the small open economy Switzerland as a testing ground for basic premises of macroeconomic models of endogenous information acquisition, using tailored surveys of firms and households. First, we show that firms perceive a greater exposure to exchange rate movements than households,...

The employment to output elasticity has risen from 0.65 during the 1960s and 1970s to 1.25 in the last two decades. We study the role of recent technological change in the evolution of this elasticity along the business cycle. Using the Covid-19-induced shock and an instrumental variable...

We examine the pass-through from producer to consumer prices, using product-group data derived from the microdata underlying the official Swedish PPI and CPI indices. We find a robust pass-through, in line with theoretical models emphasizing production inter-linkages between sectors. The results...

Our study deals with interest rate pass-through for household and corporate deposits in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, focusing on the tightening cycle starting in the middle of 2021. This period is of particular interest for interest rate pass-through, as the sharp hikes by...

We study the optimal monetary policy problem in a New Keynesian economy with a zero lower bound (ZLB) on the nominal interest rate, when the steady state natural rate (r*) becomes permanently negative. We show that the optimal policy aims to approach gradually a new steady state with positive...