This paper examines the effects of credit market imperfections and idiosyncratic risks on occupational choice, capital accumulation, as well as on the income and wealth distribution in a two sector heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model. Workers and firm owners are subject to...

This paper studies the effects of quantitative easing on income and wealth of individual euro area households. The aggregate effects of quantitative easing are estimated in a multi-country VAR model of the four largest euro area countries, in which key variables affecting household income and...

The two main empirical regularities regarding US postwar nominal and real business cycles are the Great Inflation and the Great Moderation. While the volatility of financial price variables also follows such pattern, financial quantity variables have experienced a continuous immoderation. We...

After the recent banking crisis in 2008, financial market conditions have turned out to be a relevant factor for economic fluctuations. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the impact of financial frictions on the U.S. business cycle. The analysis compares the original Smets and...

I revisit the Great Inflation and the Great Moderation for nominal and real variables. I document an immoderation in corporate balance sheet variables so that the Great Moderation is best described as a period of divergent patterns in volatilities for real, nominal and financial variables. A...

In this paper we present an overview of theoretical and empirical contributions exploring the inter-linkages between financial factors and real economic activity. We first revisit the main theoretical approaches that allow financial frictions to be embedded into general equilibrium models, and...

The Great Moderation in the U.S. economy was accompanied by a widespread increase in the volatility of financial variables. We explore the sources of the divergent patterns in volatilities by estimating a model with time-varying financial rigidities subject to structural breaks in the size of...

We investigate how changes in industries’ funding costs affect total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Panel regressions with 31 U.S. and Canadian industries between 1991 and 2007, using industries’ dependence on external funding as an identification mechanism, show that higher funding costs...