This paper examines changes of the (West) German business cycle from 1958 to 2004. It starts with a multivariate linear discriminant analysis (LDA) based decomposition of the cycle into 4 phases (upswing, upper turning point, downswing, lower turning point). After examining intercyclical changes...

A macroeconomic model is developed that incorporates a technology for on-the-job training into the endogenous growth model of Lucas (1988) and Uzawa (1965) in a manner that is consistent with the human capital explanations of certain robust features of wage profiles from the US economy. The...

If and how the conduct of the banking sector contributes to the propagation of aggregate shocks has become a prominent empirical research question. This study explores what a cyclicality analysis of net interest margins and spreads, as well as profitability figures, can contribute to the...

In this paper we survey empirical evidence on the limited pass-through from policy to retail interest rates and summarize some recent research on potential implications for monetary policy and macroeconomic fluctuations. Empirical evidence suggests that while the pass-through is incomplete in...

Since the adoption of flexible exchange rates, real exchange rates have been much more volatile than they were under Bretton Woods. However, the volatilities of most other macroeconomic variables have remained approximately unchanged. This poses a puzzle for standard international business cycle...

En este trabajo se proponen fechas precisas para los ciclos de negocios ocurridos entre 1980 y 2007 a la vez que se identifican las fases de auge y recesión. Para ello, se utiliza la metodología de Bry y Boschan (1971). Adicionalmente, se identifican algunos hechos estilizados un año antes de...

Colombia experienced a deep recession in 1999-2003. Growth slowed by 4.2%, and investment by 34.6%. Was the severity of the recession due to a financial accelerator mechanism á la Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999)? To answer this question, this paper estimates a dynamic stochastic general...

This paper reviews the relationship between the business cycle and public finances in Colombia. The evidence shows that cyclical movements in output systematically affect the situation of public finances. Hence, the distinction between the cyclical and permanent (i.e. structural) components of...

Este trabajo utiliza el concepto de ciclos de crecimiento y lo diferencia del de ciclo de negocios. Se estiman las fechas de ocurrencia de los ciclos de crecimiento en Colombia entre 1980 y 2007 utilizando los métodos de Bry y Boschan (1971) y Boschan y Ebanks (1978) conocido, este último,...

This paper analyses the role of a costly financial system in the transmission of monetary policy. The new-keynesian model for a small open economy is extended with a simple financial system based in Hamann and Oviedo (2006). The presence of the financial intermediation naturally allows the...